The Deadly Puzzle of Yellow Fever
HISTORY This Week
The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios
4.5 • 4.2K Ratings
🗓️ 22 August 2022
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
August 27, 1900. Dr. Jesse Lazear, a U.S. Army surgeon, walks into Las Animas Hospital Yellow Fever ward in Havana Cuba, toting a brood of mosquitos. He has the system down: remove the cotton stopper that keeps the mosquito penned in its glass vial, turn the vial over, and seal it against a consenting infected patient’s skin. Chasing the source of Yellow Fever, scientists try to understand this deadly plague by running a high-stakes medical experiment on human subjects. But today, those subjects will include themselves. Why did ordinary people—and the doctors running the experiment—willingly and knowingly consent to take part in this study? And when we look back, should we be horrified... or impressed?
Special thanks to our guests: Dr. Kathryn Olivarius of Stanford University and author of, Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom, as well as Molly Crosby author of, The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever the Epidemic That Shaped Our History.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The History Channel, original podcast. |
| 0:04.0 | History this week, August 27, 1900. |
| 0:09.0 | I'm Sally Helm. |
| 0:16.0 | Dr. Jesse Lazir is walking around this morning |
| 0:19.0 | toting his little brood of mosquitoes, |
| 0:23.0 | each buzzing around in their own glass vial. |
| 0:26.0 | Before lunch, he takes them to Las Animas Hospital in Havana, Cuba. |
| 0:31.0 | There, he pulls the vials out, and one by one, |
| 0:35.0 | he lets the mosquitoes feed. |
| 0:39.0 | These patients have agreed to be bitten by mosquitoes. |
| 0:43.0 | This is all part of a plan. |
| 0:45.0 | Dr. Lazir is stationed in Cuba as a US Army doctor, |
| 0:49.0 | because disease has been killing soldiers left and right. |
| 0:55.0 | Yellow fever. |
| 0:57.0 | And no one knows what causes it. |
| 1:01.0 | These patients at Las Animas Hospital have yellow fever. |
| 1:06.0 | And Dr. Lazir wants his mosquitoes full of their blood |
| 1:09.0 | so that he can later test a theory. |
| 1:12.0 | It's a minor theory, for a long time no one has taken it at all seriously. |
| 1:17.0 | But the idea is that yellow fever might be spread by mosquitoes. |
| 1:22.0 | Though Dr. Lazir has good reason to think this isn't true. |
| 1:26.0 | A little over two weeks ago, he himself was bitten by one of his mosquitoes |
... |
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