The Secret of the Yellow Death

A True Story of Medical Sleuthing

Suzanne Jurmain

• Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers
• eBook ISBN:
  9780547528359
• Year: 2014

"Extremely interesting . . . Young people interested in medicine or scientific discovery will find this book engrossing, as will history students" ( School Library Journal).
 
[He had] a fever that hovered around 104 degrees. His skin turned yellow. The whites of his eyes looked like lemons. Nauseated, he gagged and threw up again and again . . .
 
Here is the true story of how four Americans and one Cuban tracked down a killer, one of the word's most vicious plagues: yellow fever. Journeying to fever-stricken Cuba in the company of Walter Reed and his colleagues, the reader feels the heavy air, smells the stench of disease, hears the whine of mosquitoes biting human volunteers during surreal experiments.
 
Exploring themes of courage, cooperation, and the ethics of human experimentation, this gripping account is ultimately a story of the triumph of science.
 
"[A] powerful exploration of a disease that killed 100,000 U.S. citizens in the 1800s." — Kirkus Reviews
 
Includes photos

Index

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

Illustration page references appear in italics. Glossary terms appear in boldface.

A

Aedes aegypti, 28, 28, 30, 59, 75

Africa, 85, 86

Agramonte, Aristides

Carroll, James, and, 37–40, 41, 44, 81

Cuban heritage, 23

death, 81

photographs of, 15, 23

return to Cuba, 57

return to U.S., 46, 51, 52

yellow fever candidate, 39

yellow fever research

autopsies, 14–15, 22–23, 30

mosquitoes, 63, 70, 73

at Pinar del Rio (Cuba), 25

team member, 13–16

American Public Health Association, 56

Ames, Roger P., 40, 49, 63, 65

anthrax, 3

autopsy(ies), 14–15, 22–23, 30, 32, 91

B

Bacillus icteroides

in blood, 17

Carroll, James, research about, 17

microscopes used to search for, 18, 20

Reed, Walter, research about, 8, 10, 17–21, 56, 60

Sanarelli, Giuseppe, and, 8, 17, 24, 61

study of, at Camp Columbia, 14, 15, 17–21, 26

as suspected cause of yellow fever, 8, 17, 24, 60, 69

bacteria, 3, 7, 17–18, 19, 91.

See also Bacillus icteroides

bacteriology, 7, 13, 15, 91

Benigno, Antonio, 63, 64, 72

Bionda, Kate, 2

blood

Bacillus icteroides search in, 17

mosquitoes’ use of, 28, 83

studying, for diseases, 37, 37, 38

in yellow...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Copyright
• Acknowledgments
• Acknowledgments
• A Note to the Reader
• Photo
• Meeting the Monster
• “Feeding the Fishes”
• Plans
• Going Nowhere
• The First Clue?
• Bugs
• “I Have No Such Thing”
• Delirious?
• “Did the Mosquito Do It?”
• “Doctor, Are You Sick?”
• Sorting It Out
• Problems
• “We Are Doing It for Medical Science”
• Testing Times
• More Bugs
• Celebration
• Epilogue
• Appendix
• Glossary of Scientific Terms
• Chapter Notes
• Photo Credits
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author