Yellow Fever and malaria

“Although yellow fever and malaria were both transmitted by mosquitos, the diseases were quite different. Yellow fever was an acute, short-term disease and was often fatal. Malaria was rarely fatal in adults but could kill children who did not yet have fully developed immune systems. Most commonly, malaria made people feverish and weak and generated high hospitalization rates as a chronic, long-term illness. . . . Malaria is caused by Plasmodium parasites that reproduce in the mosquito gut and are then transmitted to humans by the bites of female mosquitos. The parasites take up residence in the human bloodstream and feed upon and destroy red blood cells, causing a cycle of fevers and chills every two days. . . . Malaria victims could recover but continued to harbor Plasmodia in their blood and could experience multiple episodes of active disease. . . . Yellow fever’s Aedes aegypti were urban and domestic creatures, confining themselves to inhabited areas, whereas malaria Anopheles were country cousins, preferring swamps and forests, making them much more difficult to find and destroy” (Byerly, 168).