Before health boards, these volunteers came together to fight yellow fever in Louisiana - NOLA.com
In the 18th and 19th centuries, New Orleanians could count on three things during the summer: a ferocious combination of heat and humidity, plenty of rain and an outbreak of yellow fever.
Until Dr. Walter Reed and his colleagues proved in 1900 that infected mosquitoes transmitted the disease-causing virus, no one knew how people got sick, and no one knew how to eliminate the plague.
Instead, people fired off cannons and burned sulfur to dispel the "bad air" that was believed to carry whatever caused the disease, and those who could afford to move left the city in hopes that rural surroundings might be more healthful. To reduce the fever, people used cold baths and compresses and doses of quinine.
Until 1853, New Orleans didn't have a Board of Health. But from 1837 until late in the century, New Orleans had the Howard Association, a group of male volunteers that was created as a result of that year's epidemic. Its purpose, according to its mission statement, was to administer "to the wants of the sick and destitute during the prevalence of the fever."
A Boston connection
There were Howard associations throughout the country; each was autonomous. Near the end of the century, the group became obsolete, in New Orleans and elsewhere, because health boards and other governmental organizations had been created to take over what the Howard Association had been doing. Consequently, everyone seemed to forget about it except public health officials, historians, teachers and graduate students who researched what the association had done.
Enter Steve Romano. When he was roaming the Earl K. Long Library as a student at the University of New Orleans, Romano happened upon the area containing decades of bound master's degree theses. The topic of one such tome was the Howard Association; Romano read it and was fascinated.
The object of his interest was one of many charitable groups around the country that were named for the British philanthropist and reformer John Howard (1726-90). The first was established in Boston in 1812; by the mid-1800s, Howard associations existed in most major American cities.
"I had no idea that this group existed," said Romano, 61, a retired planner for St. Charles Parish who is a part-time chauffeur for Louisiana Livery. He wrote to Curious Louisiana to learn more.
Eleven epidemics
When the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe at N. Rampart and Conti was built it was not a church-but a mortuary chapel. Yellow fever raged through the city in the early 1800s. To eliminate long funeral processions from the St. Louis Cathedral a chapel close to the St. Louis Cemetery was constructed. In December 1827 Pere Antoine de Sedella blessed the new sanctuary where all funeral rites in the Vieux Carre were performed until 1860. After the Civil War the structure was used as a place where veterans gathered for Mass. In 1875 it became a parish church. Within its walls is the International Shrine of St. Jude and outside is a small replica of the grotto at Lourdes. The church has ministered to the New Orleans police and fire departments since 1921. Staff photographer G. E. Arnold caught this glimpse that might have been common a century ago. Arnold slipped a piece of shower-door glass across the paper while making this print with the etched effect.
For 41 years, during 11 epidemics, the Howard Association of New Orleans cared for 129,346 cholera and yellow-fever patients and 66,397 welfare cases in the New Orleans area, Peggy Bassett Hildreth wrote in "Early Red Cross: The Howard Association of New Orleans, 1837-1878" in "Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association."
The society, which subsisted on donations, divided New Orleans into districts; each member was assigned a portion of a district. Volunteers were told to search out the sick in their districts "by entering every hovel where disease is likely to be found," The Picayune wrote.
Because these men strove for anonymity, membership figures are unreliable. In 1837, Hildreth wrote, estimates ranged between 22 and 150.
These men, who became known as "the Howards," taught preventive measures and used community members to find those needing help, caring for them in their homes as long as possible. Nurses were added as the need arose.
'Graveyard of the Southwest'
In "Medicine in America," Richard H. Shryock said repeated outbreaks of yellow fever and cholera led New Orleans to be called "the graveyard of the Southwest." Aldermen had procrastinated about setting up a board of health, Hildreth wrote, and business interests urged news outlets to minimize reporting on the illness because it could hurt trade.
In mid-1853, when the Howards officially announced that year's epidemic, the death toll in New Orleans had risen to 200 per week by mid-July, only to double a week later, according to DeBow's Review's "The Plague in the Southwest: The Great Yellow Fever Epidemic in 1853."
A sheet from Frank Leslie's 'Illustrated Newspaper' shows showing 12 scenes of people stricken with Yellow Fever in New Orleans, Memphis, and Vicksburg. The central image shows an empty Canal Street—save for the "victims of the fever being conveyed to the cemeteries"—during the 1878 outbreak if the illness, which killed over 4,000 people in New Orleans. (THNOC, 1981.216 i–xii)
The disease was not always deadly, but mortality was high. "Daily admissions to Charity Hospital ranged between 60 and 100, filling even its floors, as the endless parade of sick came in the front door while the dead were carried out the back," the report said.
By this time, Mayor A.D. Crossman formed and funded a temporary Board of Health, Hildreth wrote, and the Howards were among the volunteer groups that were in charge of public health. The organization opened four temporary hospitals and three orphanages to care for 241 children whose parents had succumbed to yellow fever.
More to do
The association's charter expired in 1862, when Union forces seized control of New Orleans. Until the end of the Civil War, there were no epidemics, not because of any scientific breakthrough but because occupying troops ordered the cleaning of gutters, cisterns and other places where mosquitoes were likely to breed.
But in 1866, after responsibility for public health was returned to local authorities, there was an outbreak of cholera, followed by a yellow-fever epidemic a year later.
The Howards were reincorporated and set to work, combating that plague and another outbreak in 1878. The 1878 outbreak led to an investigation of the origin of epidemic diseases, Hildreth wrote. That, in turn, led to the creation of the short-lived National Board of Health, whose duties were assumed by the U.S. Marine Hospital Service. In 1912, it evolved into the U.S. Public Health Service, which still exists.
Even though the Howard Association's role faded, it was important, Hildreth wrote. "As an American institution, which successfully operated during civic emergencies, the group set an example of volunteer action and direct participation."
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