About a year ago, we were doing some intense bird-watching on the north end of Blackbeard Island on Georgia’s coast when we came upon an eerie brick structure partially smothered by the jungle-like growth.
As we gazed at it, our interest in birds temporarily vanished. The structure, we were told, was the ruins of a crematory, built in 1904 to incinerate the bodies of crewmen and others who had died aboard ships from yellow fever.
It is the only remaining structure of a complex of 13 buildings, including a hospital, on Blackbeard that once made up the South Atlantic Quarantine Station for yellow fever, a deadly viral scourge spread to people by mosquitoes.
Yellow fever once was one of the most dreaded diseases in coastal areas. In August 1876, a yellow fever epidemic killed 1,066 people in Savannah in just two weeks. Thousands of other panicked citizens fled the city.
In response to that epidemic, the quarantine station was built on Blackbeard, one of Georgia’s most beautiful barrier islands and now a national wildlife refuge. Between 1880 and 1910, ships from tropical areas headed into ports in Georgia and neighboring states had to first report to the station, where entire vessels suspected of harboring the disease were disinfected with sulfur dioxide gas.
As crews disembarked from the ships, those that were sick were hospitalized; the healthy were housed separately and examined daily for yellow fever symptoms.
To me, the old Blackbeard station has taken on new meaning as the world grapples with another highly infectious disease, Ebola fever, which so far has killed some 5,000 people in West Africa. Considerable controversy swirls in this country over whether quarantine should be mandatory for those who might have been exposed to the malady. A century ago, though, mandatory quarantine for yellow fever was encouraged, even demanded, by the citizenry.
The U.S. government deactivated the Blackbeard station in 1909 after vaccines developed by Walter Reed and others diminished the yellow fever threat. The island became a national wildlife refuge in 1924.
IN THE SKY: The moon is first quarter today, rising around lunch time and setting around midnight, said David Dundee, Tellus Science Museum astronomer. Mercury is low in the east just before dawn. Mars is low in the southwest at sunset and sets about an hour later. Jupiter rises out of the east just before midnight.
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