Transmigrated as the Crown Prince

Dr. Henry is the most authoritative expert at the Panama Canal Hospital. He arrived at the hospital in the afternoon after working the night shift last night. He was shocked to see that the entire hospital was densely packed with people. It was almost swamped, and the air was filled with the sour smell of vomit. .

"What's going on?!" Dr. Henry grabbed a nurse and asked. "Why are there so many people suddenly?"

"Dr. Henry, you are finally here." The nurse said anxiously. "So many patients have been arriving since noon, all with the same symptoms. Mainly fever, vomiting, and diarrhea."

So many people have the same symptoms? "Food poisoning?"

"We've already asked." The nurse shook her head. "Many people didn't eat breakfast and didn't even drink water. They have the same symptoms. It shouldn't be food poisoning, right?"

"Oh, that's really weird. Take some medical records and send them to my office." Dr. Henry quickly came to the office, put on his white coat, and looked through the medical records brought by the nurse. The symptoms of all people are similar, including high fever, fatigue, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, and diarrhea. "It's not food poisoning, so what could make so many people sick at the same time?"

Suddenly, a terrible word flashed through my mind. "Jesus, it's not yellow fever, is it?"

Yellow fever is an acute infectious disease caused by infection with the yellow fever virus and is transmitted through the bite of Aedes mosquitoes. The main clinical manifestations of yellow fever are high fever, chills, headache, body pain, fatigue, yellow urine, loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea, proteinuria, relatively slow pulse, and bleeding.

In 1648, yellow fever emerged in Barbados, West Indies. In the following two centuries, yellow fever was endemic in the Americas, Africa and a few European countries, so it was also called the "American Plague."

This type of yellow fever, also known as black vomiting, begins with chills and fever. The patient experiences general weakness, back pain, headache, and aching limbs, and these symptoms gradually worsen. In more severe cases, vomiting occurs - the vomit is darkened by bleeding from the stomach. Fever, chills, and pain subside in two to three days. For the more fortunate patients (about 7 in 10) the disease ends and the survivors are immune for life. For others, there is only two or three days of relief, and then the fever and black vomiting return, and the patient's nose and gums begin to ooze blood. When liver dysfunction occurs, the patient's skin will turn yellow like jaundice, become mentally disturbed, and often struggle violently. Of course there are a few people who make miraculous recoveries in this final stage, but most sufferers will fall into a coma until convulsions and death end their suffering.

According to incomplete statistics at the time, nearly 80% of the patients died within one month of onset, and there were so many corpses that they could not be buried. Soon, yellow fever spread from Barbados to the West Indies and further made landfall throughout Central America. Over the next two hundred years, yellow fever swept across the Americas, and white colonists from Europe became its key targets.

In 1961, yellow fever swept across Havana, Cuba via Mexico, killing many residents. Among the British troops stationed there, foreign soldiers were not affected at all, but among the 15,000 British troops stationed, 3,000 sailors and 5,000 soldiers died of yellow fever.

In 1795, about 4,000 soldiers were sent to Haiti from Britain. Only 1,800 of these people survived the next year. In 1796, of the approximately 13,000 newly arrived soldiers, approximately 1,300 died of yellow fever in May and June alone. At that time, it had become an extremely luxurious thing to dig graves to bury the dead. Five or six corpses were often buried in one grave.

By the late 17th century, yellow fever had spread to the North American colony of New York. In September, deaths occur almost every day. In the summer of 1702, yellow fever, known as the "American Plague", broke out again in New York, killing a total of 570 people, with a case fatality rate of 10%. Since then, yellow fever has broken out several times in New York, killing thousands.

Yellow fever, with its violent contagiousness and alarming mortality rate, has been listed by historians as one of the three most dangerous infectious diseases in history, along with the plague and cholera.

Even in later generations, there is no specific drug treatment for yellow fever, and the main focus is on prevention. Get vaccinated in time when you are not sick and take various measures to prevent mosquito bites to prevent infection. Once you are accidentally infected, you can only treat symptoms and actively prevent and treat various complications.

As mentioned earlier, France was the first to build the Panama Canal.

The project team ignored the climate of the Isthmus of Panama. Panama has a tropical jungle climate, with humid and hot weather. Infectious diseases such as malaria and yellow fever have repeatedly raged in the area. This paved the way for the eventual failure of France's construction of the Panama Canal.

Yellow fever killed thousands of French construction workers. According to statistics, in 1884 alone, one-third (about 7,000 people) of the more than 20,000 workers digging the canal were infected with or died of yellow fever. In 1886, 30 French engineers arrived in Panama, and a month later 13 died of yellow fever. At that time, the mortality rate of canal workers was 176/1,000; during the French construction of the Panama Canal, more than 22,000 workers died due to illness and other reasons. France tried various methods but could not stop the raging of yellow fever in the Canal Zone. Due to the casualties caused by yellow fever and financial constraints, the project progress was difficult. France barely supported it until 1894, when it announced that it had given up on this cross-century project. , the Panama Canal Company declared bankruptcy.

After the French left, the United States took over the construction of the Panama Canal.

The United States faced the same problem as the French when building the Panama Canal, namely how to deal with tropical infectious diseases, including yellow fever.

They take a series of measures to eliminate the impact of infectious diseases. These include: (1) Cutting down the forests on both sides of the canal to increase the distance between the hot and humid forests where mosquitoes gather and the employee areas; (2) Organizing a large-scale anti-mosquito operation; (3) Strengthening medical services for workers; (4) Recruiting malaria experts Black workers with natural immunity. At the same time, medical experts headed by Dr. Gorges implemented "new sanitary measures during the construction of the Panama Canal." Through the above measures, malaria was largely eliminated in 1905; by 1907, yellow fever was eradicated in the Panama Canal area.

But why did yellow fever suddenly recur after 33 years?

"Quickly, isolate all the patients and protect the medical staff." Although he has not experienced it personally, Dr. Henry also knows that yellow fever is extremely contagious.

But isolation is not that easy. If one or two patients are isolated in one ward, and a dozen patients are isolated on one floor, the hospital is now crowded with patients, and even isolating the entire hospital is not enough.

But not long after the order was given, the head nurse ran over with a panicked look on her face. "Dr. Henry, it's bad, a few nurses are also vomiting."