The History of Yellow Fever in West Africa

Now that West Africa is beginning in earnest to open up to mining and industrial enterprises of all kinds, I wiEh to lay before the medical profession, through the medium of the BRITISH MBDICAL JOURNAL, a review of the history of yellow fever in West Africa, which shows that yellow fever is far more prevalent than is usually supposed.In fact, my observations prove, in my opinion, that yellow fever is endemic to-day amongst the natives of the coast towns, precisely as it was amongst the Creoles, the yellow-skins of Havana, Rio, Santos, Para, Vera Cruz, etc.If the mining managers and merchants will forearm thempelves by adopting the rational precautions of segregation and Stegomyjia destruction on the West Coast,,they need not {ear the awful set-backs to commercial progress which the towns above named experienced from yellow fever.For convenience of reference I have summarized the history of yellow fever under the following heads: 1. General. 2. Yellow fever in Sierra Leone.3. Yellow fever in Southern Nigeria. 4. Yellow fever in the Gambia. 5. Yellow fever in Senegal.6. Yellow fever in Ascension and Bonavista.7. Yellow fever on the Gold Coast.8. Yellow fever on the Ivory Coas'.9. Yellow fever in Togoland.10.Yellow fever in Dahomey.I. HISTORY OF YELLOW FEVER IN AFRICA.... The conclusion arrived at concerning the question whether yellow fever was first endemic in the West Indies or in Central and Southern America, was that yellow fever was endemic amongst the early inhabitants of both placer.When the even more fragmentary history of yellow fever in West Africa is examined, we will, I think, come to a similar conclusion as regards the West African continent, namely, that yellow fever was in all probability a disease