The records of the British Army in the West Indies show an appalling death rate, chiefly from this disease.

At Jamaica, for the twenty years ending in 1836, the average mortality was 101 per thousand, and in certain instances as high as 178.
One of the most dreaded of all infections, the periods of epidemics in the Southern States have been the occasions of a widespread panic with complete paralysis of commerce.

How appalling the mortality is may be judged from the outbreak in Philadelphia in 1793, when ten thousand people died in three months.( 5) The epidemics in Spain in the early part of the nineteenth century were of great severity.

A glance through La Roche's great book( 6) on the subject soon gives one an idea of the enormous importance of the disease in the history of the Southern States.

Havana, ever since its foundation, had been a hotbed of yellow fever.