Tuesday, Nov. 27 - Dr. Joseph Yates Porter Ends the Yellow Fever Quarantine - a podcast by 43 Keys Media

Yellow Fever, also known as the yellow plague, or the yellow jack was one of the most dangerous and dreaded disease is prevalent in Florida. During the 1800s, the diseases viral and we now know that it's spread primarily by a certain type of mosquito, but this wasn't known back then. And in the meantime, we had huge epidemics that broke out in Florida, mainly during the summer months, but especially in the cities with no good understanding of how the disease was caused or spread. Floridians often blame the infection on contact with another yellow fever patient or the presence of swampy areas called me OS. mamas, who had these fumes that were very difficult to breathe, probably similar to this Sargasso grass die offs that we see sometimes here in the Keys and the pungent smell made them think they had come in contact with something infectious.

Preventing yellow fever became an essential part of life in Florida, and entire communities were built and developed to provide a place for those who could afford it to get away from the sickly downtown areas during the summer months.

Yellow Fever even affected the social seasons as many businesses and schools just closed down during the hottest month of the year to avoid the danger as more people moved into Florida, and transportation by rail became faster and more common. Well, the yellow fever epidemics became larger and even deadlier.

A series of outbreaks emerged in cities across the state infecting thousands of workers and wrecking local commerce. Larger port cities like Key West Tampa, and Jacksonville, where the hardest hit. Hundreds of residents fled the cities, while those who remain tried every conceivable method to combat the skirt whose origins they could not understand.

In Jacksonville, people built large fires with heart pine, believing that the pungent smell of the burning pitch would cleanse the air.

They even shot cannons packed with heavy charges in the center of town with the belief that the shock waves would break up the invisible organisms responsible for causing the fever.

Yellow Fever brought considerable destruction in Florida, and it indirectly benefited the state as well the severity of the epidemics and led legislators to take action by forming the State Board of Health to help combat the problem.

The board met for the first time in 1889 with Dr. Joseph Y. Porter of Key West as the first State Health Official. Porter and his colleagues across the state immediately set to work to establish quarantine policies for ports and working with local governments to clean up potential breeding grounds for disease.

Survivors of yellow fever actually became immune to further infection and the State Board of Health issued immunity cards to these individuals so they could travel during the epidemics without even being subject to the quarantines.

And it was today November 27, 1889, that Dr. Joseph Yates Porter, the State Health Officer, finally lifted the yellow fever quarantining Key West.

Dr. Joseph Y. Porter lived at a house on for 29 Caroline St. On June 4, 1973, his house was added to the US National Register of Historic Places.

The house was originally constructed in 1838 by Judge James Webb, who was the first federal judge in the Southern District of the Florida territory.

The house at 429 Caroline Street is best known the lifelong home of Dr. Joseph Yeates Porter Jr. His father bought the property in 1845 and Porter lived in the home for 80 years, dying in the same room he was born in.

He was Key West first native born physician and Florida's first public health officer from 1898-1917.

He was instrumental in controlling yellow fever, reforming sanitation and parenting practices and initiating health legislation. Porter was among the first physicians to recognize yellow fever as transmissible by mosquitoes.

And today, if you find yourself in Key West, you'll...

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