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The Great Fever. Dir. by Adriana Bosch and Michael Chin. Prod, by Adriana Bosch. Bosch and Company Inc. for American Experience, 2006. 58 mins. (PBS Home Video, http:// www.shoppbs.org/)
Anyone familiar with the pbs series American Experience is aware of the quality of these productions. The Great Fever, written, produced, and co-directed by Adriana Bosch, is no exception. This one-hour documentary centers on Carlos Finlay (1833-1915), Jesse W. Lazear (1866-1900), and Walter Reed (1851-1902) as its dramatis personae, with minor roles featuring the contributions of James Carroll (1854-1907) and William Crawford Gorgas (1854-1920). Those familiar with the history of medicine will immediately recognize these figures as prominent in the conquest of an ancient ailment, yellow fever.
Alexo de Abreu and Father Jean-Baptiste Du Tertre gave early, detailed reports of yellow fever outbreaks from 1623 through 1648, with Matthew Carey presenting a detailed description of the Philadelphia epidemic of 1793. Despite the clear and unequivocal symptomatology of this serious febrile disorder, characterized in its later stages by acute jaundice and black vomit, its etiology was not well understood until Carlos Finlay and the U.S. Army...