Yellow Fever epidemic of 1878 and Congressional failure to pass national public health legislation

“The investigation of the yellow fever epidemic in 1878 and the struggle over national health legislation during the fall and winter of 1878-79 were governed by political and personal considerations to which the issue of public health was altogether secondary. . . . In its political and constitutional aspects, the struggle found the southern proponents of a strong federal health agency in the role of nationalists contending against northern defenders of states rights. To the leaders of the American Public health Association, the ongoing of the sanitary movement depended upon maintaining the state’s implied police power to preserve and protect the public health” (Ellis, loc 1717-1728).