Yellow Fever was a highly contagious and deadly disease. In 1864, it ravaged the town of Newbern, North Carolina.
The Union publication, "Medical and Surgical Reporter" of September, 1864, published the following:
"Yellow fever is prevailing to an alarming extent.
"Never before in the history of the place has any epidemic been known to rage so violently and so fatally. One account says the citizens have more than they can do to attend to the sick and bury the dead. In a number of houses when entered, corpses have been found, dead probably a day or two, remaining there in a state of decomposition, for want of persons to remove them.
"The disease usually appears with a chill, followed by a fever, which increases in violence until the patient dies with black vomit, often in less than twenty-four hours. Children and Negroes very generally escape. It is mainly confined to the native white citizens."
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