Yellow Fever

“ . . . some physicians saw medicine as a capitalist endeavor rather than a civic calling and yellow fever as ‘a money making scheme’ as good as any other. With a constant supply of sick people, doctoring was an ideal mechanism to acquire capital that would eventually be invested in a planation, the region’s primary engine for weal creation. . . . for many doctors, medicine became less about protecting the health of individual and more about financing the doctor-turned-planter’s investments in the cotton and sugar economies. . . . epidemic disease was simply good for business.” (Olivarius, 106, 109). In alignment with planter interests, physicians never diagnosed yellow fever before July 1 to forestall economic contraction that followed beginning of yellow fever season. But after July 1, they were “incentivized to diagnose ‘every little fever’ as yellow fever (103).