Why a past epidemic made people want to live on the Mississippi Coast
The coronavirus is scary and leaves many of us with the feeling that we are, to some extent, a victim of forces beyond our control.
Yet, this is not the first highly contagious disease to affect the Gulf Coast — that occurred in a time when scientific understanding of such processes was minimal and widespread communication and support was nil. But, the citizens still prevailed.
The disease was Yellow Fever. The time was the 1800s.
Ironically, Yellow Fever was a factor to spur settlement of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. It had been long recognized that a summer-time, often-fatal disease that sickened people, turning them yellow as they became jaundiced, would appear in populated areas throughout the Caribbean and southern United States. This was more apparent in populated areas.
People who could afford it moved from the hot, crowded disease-prone areas of Mobile and New Orleans to less populous resort areas, among them Bay St. Louis, Biloxi, Ocean Springs and Pascagoula. There the cooler breezes seemed to provide respite from the problem. These communities became resort areas.
By 1853, the plague worsened as a major epidemic descended on New Orleans. The plague spread to Biloxi with 533 cases and a one-in-five fatality rate.
There were other waves of infection. In 1878, Ocean Springs had a population of about 600. The epidemic that year sickened 175 people with 30 deaths, producing an attack rate of one out of every 3.4 people, and once the victim was infected a death rate of almost one in six, that is about 17% of people infected died.
The problem was, although nobody knew it, the mosquito. It transmitted the Yellow Fever virus. It wasn’t until Army doctor Walter Reed in 1901 proved the mosquito had been passing the virus from one person to the next. Prior to that it was known that the disease occurred in swampy areas and disappeared after the first cold snap, giving rise to the common misconception that it was due to a “miasma” from swamp gases.
Isolation was the only known preventative. The worst years were 1878 and 1898.
At the height of the epidemics, ships arriving at Ship Island and trains from both East and West were suspect. Passenger trains were not allowed to stop. Ocean Springs, as well as other cities that were “infected,” reacted with police and armed guards at the ports and train stations to ensure no one got off or on. At the peak, sometimes entire families were buried — their homes burned.
Interestingly, one popular idea was that burning creosote would purify the air. The creosote plant in Gautier in the 1878 epidemic shipped ten barrels, free of charge, to their neighbors in Ocean Springs. Isolation and maybe some toxic creosote smoke did work, sort-of. In the 1897 epidemic, Ocean Springs had only three documented deaths.
It wasn’t until Walter Reed showed that eradicating mosquitoes together with isolation of victims worked that the disease began to be conquered. A widespread safe vaccine did not become available until 1939 — however the disease had by then been whipped — the last locally induced case in the U..S occurring in 1905.
So, what is the take-home message? Times past have been a lot tougher, but our determined population has always pitched together and overcome adversity.
Dr. Chris Wiggins writes from the perspective of the Jackson County Historical and Genealogical Society. More about this can found in his books, “A Tale of Two (Mississippi) Cities” and “What You Always Wanted to Know about Ocean Springs and Gautier but…” Available at amazon.com. Proceeds go to the historical society.