102 RüdigerKunow
the initial response was denial.^54 A city newspaper summarized the
general feeling thus: "The city is quiet and yellow fever rumors appear
to have abated... This should effectively dispose of the tale circulated
by sensationalists about the presence of yellow fever here" (qtd. in M.
Crosby52-53).Ittookalmosttwoweeksforthediseasetogoonpublic
record, and pretty soon, the city was stricken not only by yellow fever
but also by a general panic. People fled the city (or tried to); of those
that remained, many got infected by the fever and died (Nuwer 125-30;
"The Great Fever: People and Events" n. pag.). Predictably, the fever
then wreaked havoc on the city's economy, the entire cotton market
collapsed,withrepercussionsacrosstheOldSouth.
Here, the fact noted earlier, namely that disease ecologies produce
geographical differentiations on top of other differentiations based on
accessibility, economic attractiveness or symbolic significance, played
itself out vigorously in what I have called abiopoliticsoflocation. The
medical dangers that were associated with the city were the real or
imagined reason that trade with Memphis and the region came to a
standstill and remained so for quite some time. Thus, even as medical
precariousness became less pronounced after the epidemic had run its
course, economic precariousness came to dominate city life for many
yearstocome.Memphisremaineddependentonaidfrom otherpartsof
the country, not only from the Old South but also from the booming
industrial centers of the North-East. In the years when Reconstruction
wasterminated,thiswasanotablefeat.
Furthermore, the Memphis epidemic and even more so its aftermath
marked a new and determined step in the "governmentalization" of life.
In the debate about how best to prevent further calamities of that kind,
the conflict between federal authority and states' rights, which the Civil
Warseemedtohavesettledonceandforall,nowflaredupagain,ifonly
on a different, bio-medical turf. National agencies like the American
Public Health Association, founded only a few years ago, were pushing
hard for federal intervention and control over prevention and treatment
of mass diseases, including quarantines, while Southern politicians
(^54) In all fairness, I must add here that this response was quite understandable as
Memphis citizens well knew from previous experience that even rumors of
infectioninthecitycouldanddidmeansubstantialeconomiclosses.