Yellow Fever Quotes

“In times of stress and danger such as come about as the result of an epidemic, many tragic and cruel phases of human nature are brought out, as well as many brave and unselfish ones.”
― William Crawford Gorgas, Sanitation in Panama

“My dear Gorgas,
Instead of being simply satisfied to make friends and draw your pay, it is worth doing your duty, to the best of your ability, for duty’s sake; and in doing this, while the indolent sleep, you may accomplish something that will be of real value to humanity.
Your good friend, Reed
Dr. Walter Reed encouraging Dr. William Gorgas who went on to make history eradicating Yellow Fever in Havana, 1902 and Panama, 1906, liberating the entire North American continent from centuries of Yellow Fever epidemics.”
― William Crawford Gorgas, Sanitation in Panama

“How to spell Aedes aegypti,the world's one-stop, viral-disease-transmitting mosquito: T-R-O-U-B-L-E.”
― T.K. Naliaka

“Incredibly, just one mosquito species, Aedes aegypti is responsible for the spread of four known different deadly viral diseases to human beings, yet this mosquito has been allowed to infest densely-populated urban centers.”
― T.K. Naliaka

“Nature had found the perfect place to hide the yellow fever virus. It seeded itself and grew in the blood, blooming yellow and running red.”
― Molly Caldwell Crosby, The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, the Epidemic that Shaped Our History

“It is almost impossible for contemporaries to judge the true value of discoveries, or to give the proper position to the men of their own time who make these discoveries. The Surgeon-General of the Public Health Service expected the greatest results to flow from his commission of medical officers, but the conclusions of the Board turned out to be all wrong, while he did not notice the report from his own subordinate, Dr. H. R. Carter, which turned out to be pure gold and was one of the great steps in establishing the true method of the transmission of Yellow Fever.”
― William Crawford Gorgas, Sanitation in Panama

“Recognizing its importance, Aedes aegypti should be studied as a long-term national, regional, and world problem rather than as a temporary local threat to the communities suffering at any given moment from yellow fever, dengue or other aegypti-borne disease. No one can foresee the extent of the future threat of Aedes aegypti to mankind as a vector of known virus diseases, and none can foretell what other virus diseases may yet affect regions where A. aegypti is permitted to remain.”
― Fred Lowe Soper, Building the Health Bridge: Selections from the Works of Fred L. Soper

“Aedes aegypti, which transmits yellow fever, is one of the feeblest species in its ability for flight and it is at once blown away and destroyed when it gets into a breeze. It therefore seldom wanders from the house in which it was bred.”
― William Crawford Gorgas, Sanitation in Panama

“Havana, Cuba, in which city yellow fever had not failed to make its yearly appearance during the past one hundred and forty years... Havana was freed from yellow fever within ninety days. Dr. Walter Reed, 1902”
― Walter Reed

“In the middle of the cemetery is a grassy plane, strangely vacant. There are no granite tombs or crumbling concrete, just a sun-washed treeless patch of green known as "No Man's Land." Here 1,500 unidentified bodies are buried. At one time, their skin burned with yellow fever; now they lie in a cool, dark place where long ago their arms and legs, hands and feet, were intertwined for eternity.”
― Molly Caldwell Crosby, The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, the Epidemic that Shaped Our History

“In one respect New Orleans has set an example for all the world in the fight against yellow fever. The first impression was the complete organization of the citizens and the rational and reasonable way in which the fight has been conducted by them. With a tangible enemy in view, the army of defense could begin to fight rationally and scientifically. The... spirit in which the citizens of New Orleans sallied forth to win this fight strikes one who has been witness to the profound gloom, distress, and woe that cloud every other epidemic city. Rupert Boyce, Dean of Liverpool School of Tropical Diseases, 1905”
― Rupert Boyce

“Despite 4,000 years of proven usefulness, quarantines seem to be to modern international public health experts as garlic is to a vampire.”
― T.K. Naliaka

“Will Brazilian antigambiae measures succeed in Africa? As time goes by it will almost certainly be found that an increasing number of areas can be cleaned of gambiae and be freed of gambiae-transmitted malaria. In Africa, where the species is already widely disseminated, it would seem logical to attempt eradication by beginning in the center of the area to be cleaned and working always outward. It has been demonstrated in Brazil that species eradication of Aedes aegypti and Anopheles gambiae is feasible.”
― Fred Lowe Soper, Anopheles Gambiae in Brazil, 1930 to 1940

“The use of vaccine in the control of yellow fever should occupy more or less the same place that typhoid fever vaccine has in the control of typhoid fever. No sanitary authority would desire to substitute typhoid vaccine for the supply of pure water and food, so we must not accept the yellow fever vaccine as a substitute for the elimination of Aedes aegypti. The vaccine provides individual protection for the person who cannot be protected by more general measures.”
― Fred Lowe Soper

“Raising awareness versus raising alarm;
the public can't be better informed if the information isn't better.”
― T.K. Naliaka

“I am sorry for you tonight, Mr. President. You are facing one of the greatest decisions of your career. Upon what you decide depends on whether or not you are going to get your canal. If you fall back upon the old methods of sanitation you will fail, just as the French failed. If you back up Dr. Gorgas and his ideas, and you let him make his campaign against mosquitoes, then you get your canal. I can only give you my advice; you must decide for yourself. There is only one way of controlling yellow fever and malaria, and that is the eradication of the mosquitoes. But it is your canal; you must do the choosing and you must choose tonight whether you are going to build that canal.”
― Thomas W. Martin, Doctor William Crawford Gorgas Of Alabama And The Panama Canal

“He was one of life’s great helpers, for he cleaned up foul places and made them sweet.”
― Thomas W. Martin, Doctor William Crawford Gorgas Of Alabama And The Panama Canal

“The case which I reported on September 26, 1901, was really the last which occurred in Havana. Of course we did not know it at the time, but this case marked the first conquest of yellow fever in an endemic center; the first application of the mosquito theory to practical sanitary work in any disease.”
― William Crawford Gorgas, Sanitation in Panama

“Fortunately for the cause of science and of humanity, we had as Governor-General of Cuba at that time General Leonard Wood, of the United States Army. General Wood had been educated as a physician, and had a very proper idea of the great advantages which would accrue to the world if we could establish the fact that yellow fever was conveyed by the mosquito, and his medical training made him a very competent judge as to the steps necessary to establish such fact. General Wood during the whole course of the investigations took the greatest interest in the experiments, and assisted the Board in every way he could.”
― William Crawford Gorgas, Sanitation in Panama

“Eradicating mosquitoes is a means to an end. An uninfected mosquito is harmless to humans - just a nuisance. An infected mosquito is a danger.”
― T.K. Naliaka

“There is no such things as a 'harmless' racial preference. Sexual racism is a living, breathing creature amidst our society today.”
― Giboom Park, Not Your Yellow Fantasy: Deconstructing the Legacy of Asian Fetishization

“To fetishize, reject, and emasculate individuals based on their race is to objectify and dehumanise them, transforming them into nothing but objects meant to appease the desires of the user.”
― Giboom Park, Not Your Yellow Fantasy: Deconstructing the Legacy of Asian Fetishization

“Those words they throw at you and which stick onto you -- I know they hurt. But remember, you are beautiful for who you are. Not for your ethnicity or your relationship to others. Don't play into a part society creates for you or feel as if you need to be a certain way to be loved and accepted. You are not their object, their doll, or their magical dream. You are not their yellow fantasy.”
― Giboom Park, Not Your Yellow Fantasy: Deconstructing the Legacy of Asian Fetishization