yellow fever

Yellow fever (also called yellow jack, or sometimes black vomit or American Plague) is an acute viral disease.^[1] It is an important cause of hemorrhagic illness in many African and South American countries despite existence of an effective vaccine. The yellow refers to the jaundice symptoms that affect some patients.^[2]

Yellow fever has been a source of several devastating epidemics.^[3] Yellow fever epidemics broke out in the 1700s in Italy, France, Spain, and England.^[4] 300,000 people are believed to have died from yellow fever in Spain during the 19th century.^[5] French soldiers were attacked by yellow fever during the 1802 Haitian Revolution; more than half of the army perished from the disease.^[6] Outbreaks followed by thousands of deaths occurred periodically in otherWestern Hemisphere locations until research, which included human volunteers (some of whom died), led to an understanding of the method of transmission to humans (primarily^{[citation needed]} by mosquitos) and development of a vaccine and other preventive efforts in the early 20th century.