Yellow fever.

Yellow fever epidemics could still happen: There have been recent major outbreaks in both Brazil and Angola (that last epidemic spread to the DRC and even to China before mass innoculations stopped the spread of the disease.)

But since the virus lives in animals, and since the greens are opposing things like draining swamps and spraying with DDT, one wonders how long before another epidemic hits the USA (Or the Philippines: I haven't seen them spray for mosquitoes since covid hit, probably because all the public health money went to covid shots and testing).

The history of Yellow fever epidemics in the USA has been pretty well forgotten, even though theYellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia was a major event in medical history

note the article mentions use of black nurses: it was assumed they had immunity to yellow fever.

and the role of nurses, including black nurses, in the Yellow fever epidemics of Memphis in the 1870s has also been overlooked.

from the dailyJstor; (an article in the modern marxist analysis that stresses the problems of prejudice instead of the goodness of those trying their best to help people).

Despite those prejudices, nearly 3,000 women worked as nurses on yellow fever’s front lines. Women from out of town were only paid $4 per day; women from within Memphis and black women were paid $3. In contrast, doctors were paid $60 per week. They were treated as social inferiors and refused accommodation at the city’s finest hotel, which put up doctors.

Gender conflicts prevailed in the sickroom, too, and arguments broke out over things like treatment duties and breaks. Class and cultural tensions prevailed, but Hall writes that racial tensions were at the heart of the worst discrimination faced by nurses. Black nurses were assigned the most uncooperative patients and faced daily struggles over duties, responsibilities, and competency.

left out: Many had little or no training, and not screened for skill or moral turpitude. 

Despite their heroic efforts of nurses of all races, 20,000 people died of yellow fever in the Mississippi Valley during the epidemic—over 5,000 of them in Memphis. Even that terrifying crisis was not enough to overcome prevailing racial, class, and gender tensions, Hall writes. Who knows what tensions a 21st-century epidemic might expose?

Yes, she actually wrote that. Because in modern academia, this is the most important idea you have to discuss. 

However, in her defense, these things do have to be considered when you fight a plague.

the riots from the burning of Chinatown in SanFrancisco to stop bubonic plague there does show you have to pay attention to racial tension and prejudice.

Left out of this was of course the religion angle: Because the blackout of contributions of black people and women are now being reversed by modern scholarship, the religious aspects are still being ignored.

this LifetimeFilm is a partially fictional biography of Sister Henrietta, and at the end shows their fight against the yellow fever epidemic in New Orleans.

Hint: A lot of altruism was inspired by people who like good Americans tended toward the Pelagean idea that deeds, not lip service, are how you serve God.

Which brings me to the latest atrocity of the culture war: The war against nuns.

Nuns nursing in wars (5000 in the Civil War) and epidemics, or just founding hospitals in the middle of nowhere contributed a lot to the development of American health system

What is new is that their sacrifices and work has been ignored or written out of history, while it is de rigueur to ridicule them: we even are seeing a major league baseball team lauding those who ridicule these sisters with little outcry.

the ridicule is just another version of trendy AntiCatholicism, of course. 

But although their ridicule is aimed at Catholic sisters, it also is ridicule of non Catholic sisterhoods, such as the Anglican orders and Deaconesses.

What brought me to post about this was an article in the Anglican site Virtue on line, which mentions that the Anglican orders are facing the same problems of loss of members as their Catholic counterparts.

But then I ran across this paragraph:

In 1878, five CSM Sisters responded to the yellow fever epidemic in Memphis, Tennessee. Four of the Sisters and two Episcopal priests got the dreaded mosquito-borne disease and died. They were: Sr. Constance, Sr. Thecla, Sr. Ruth, Sr. Frances, Fr. Louis Schuyler and Fr. Charles Parsons.

They are now considered the Martyrs of Memphis and their commemoration was added to the Episcopal Church's Lesser Feasts and Fasts in 1981. Their feast day is celebrated on September 9.

so at least the Episcopal church remembers their sacrifice.

But of course, they were not the only ones who fought that epidemic that killed over 5000 people: This site (historic Memphis) remembers the numerous doctors, nurses and others who helped nurse the sick.,,

and this film gives an overview of the epidemic but while lauding the work of the heroic doctors, completely ignores the sisters and others who died because they stayed to nurse the sick.

,

https://historic-memphis.com/memphis-historic/yellow-fever/fever-5_small.jpg

MacnamarasBlog notes:

Between 1873 and 1879, nearly eight thousand people died during Memphis’s Yellow Fever epidemics. While ministering to the sick, some thirty-four physicians lost their lives, along with twenty-four police officers and twenty-four firefighters, two dozen Catholic priests, and fifty women religious. In Memphis’s Calvary Cemetery there stands a monument to the priests, but none to the Sisters.

Italics mine.

Sigh

As Ms Mueller writes: 

The world has turned its back on the Sisters of St. Mary and many other faithful and prayerful Sisters-in-the-Veil -- Catholic, Episcopal or Anglican -- yet embrace the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence as the Los Angeles Dodgers prepare to bend their collective knee to the rainbow-colored Pride altar.

Shame.