TheMaterialismofBiologicalEncounters 103
wanted regulations tailored to local needs. This was a rather sensitive
point because in the year 1878 local agencies down the river, most
notably in New Orleans, had hushed up information about the fever on
board of incoming ships for fear of losing trade (M. Crosby 40-42, 90;
Nuwer23-26,38).
Even though the focus of this narrative is on the city of Memphis,
one should not forget the events there were part of a larger, regional
disease ecology which had not for the first time produced a regional
disaster. Along the Mississippi, such a disease ecology had existed for
quite some time, not just in epidemiological expert knowledge but also
as part of the collective memory. It had established itself as a relatively
stableandevensomewhatpredictable"factoflife"towhichcommercial
interests and the most modern means of transportation had
accommodated themselves. When the railroads began to connect cities
alongtheriver,anddidsofasterthanthesteamboatshad,thenumberof
incidents of yellow fever rose quickly, as it did generally across the
Southern states (M. Crosby 40; Scott 79-80). Local health officials and
medicaldoctorslearnedtowatch"suspect"peoplemoreclosely.^55
But even such a regional perspective does not tell the whole story.
The chain of infection did not stop in Memphis, nor did it originate in
port cities further down the Mississippi, such as New Orleans. In the
summerof1878,morethanadozenships,includingtheonefromwhich
the virus had crossed over to theJohnD.Porterand its crew, regularly
travelled between the Mississippi region and destinations in the
Caribbean, especially Havana, Cuba (M. Crosby 41; on the basis of
ships registers). Their cargo was sugar and other commodities, but they
were also bringing "fresh supplies" of pathogenic material so that the
fever could and did not come to an end, soon. A mass medical event
such as the outbreak in Memphis can therefore be properly understood
only in terms of a perspective sensitive to the unavoidable "living
connections" between accepted, even prized forms of human mobility
(commerce and political intervention) and their detested, even denied
dialectical counterparts, the hemispheric mobility of infectious
(^55) AsmedicalhistorianRobertDesowitznotices,inthiscontext,"railroadswere
viewed not as a channel of commerce but as channel of contagion" (qtd. in M.
Crosby40).