New Orleans

Latest

Urbanization

Painting of the Staten Island Quarantine Facility—built in 1799 to care for yellow fever patients, where by the 1850s all passengers from newly arrived ships with signs of a disease were quarantined. The image is an oil painting showing a bustling waterway with lots of tall ships with sails lowered and smaller vessels ferrying cargo to them. GETTY IMAGES/Keith Lance

Plague Ships, Shotgun Mobs, and the "Saffron Scourge"

by Jason Socrates Bardi, Caroline Kantis

Recalling the massive, deadly New Orleans yellow fever epidemic of 1878—and what lessons it holds for coronavirus today