The Texas Congress picked Houston as the new capital of the Lone Star Republic over Matagorda and Washington-on-the-Brazos on Nov. 30, 1836.
The Allen brothers had three years to convince skeptics that their humid heaven-on-earth should be the permanent seat of government. The resourceful promoters did a bang-up job but were beaten in the end by an invisible foe – Yellow Fever.
In the summer of 1839, the choice of capitals came down to Houston or President Mirabeau Lamar’s pet project in the western wilderness. An outbreak of “Yellow Jack” in the ramshackle settlement on Buffalo Bayou settled the issue once and for all in favor of Austin.
The closest Houston ever came to drying up and blowing away occurred after that initial epidemic. A third of the populace was stricken, and one out of 12 residents perished. Translated into modern figures, that horrendous toll would amount to nearly half a million cases and 133,000 fatalities.
Yellow fever is a virus transmitted by a particular species of mosquito, the resilient insect that has dined on coastal Texans since the Stone Age. Approximately six days after being bitten by the infected pest, the victim developed a high fever, headache, dizziness and muscular pain. While most soon recovered and were rewarded with immunity for life, pure hell awaited the unfortunate few.
The fever subsided for a day or two and then suddenly soared. The infection spread at an astonishing rate, wrecking the liver, which flooded the body with bile pigments that turned the skin a ghastly yellow.
In the terminal stage, profuse bleeding of the gums and stomach lining produced the fatal symptom known as “black vomit.” The delirious patient lapsed into a coma of no return. To die from Yellow Jack was a hard, hard way to go.
Medical science in the mid-nineteenth century was a primitive guessing game, and the handful of legitimate doctors in Texas drew a blank when confronted by the deadly new threat. The appalling ignorance of professional healers spawned a strange assortment of homespun cures and bogus remedies.
Like many other afflictions, yellow fever was blamed on the insidious “vapors” thought to poison the night. Houstonians battened down the hatches after dark and endured the stifling heat rather than breathe the toxic evening air. As required by city ordinance, barrels of tar and sulphur burned until dawn blanketing the community with a foul-smelling cloud that supposedly neutralized the invisible danger.
According to another popular belief, city life was inherently hazardous to the public health. A casual glance seemed to support this claim because in addition to a sweltering climate, poor drainage and stagnant bayous, Houston swarmed with rats, flies and fleas. The frontier settlement was a breeding ground for every conceivable contagion, but that fact alone did not solve the yellow fever mystery.
Although people noticed the disease disappeared after a cold snap, they did not connect that blessing with the mass annihilation of mosquitoes. Instead, the plunging temperature was credited with miraculous powers, a naive notion responsible for the ridiculous idea that yellow fever could be cured by putting the patient in cold storage.
A gullible and paranoid public proved easy prey for quacks and fast-buck artists. Scarce drugs were marked up as much as 1,000 percent above retail, while itinerant peddlers sold wagonloads of worthless concoctions.
Following the first epidemic in 1839, Houston was subjected to eight more serious sieges of the yellow death prior to the last lethal visit in 1867. For three anxious decades, summer was a season of terror that signaled wholesale evacuation and brought business to a virtual standstill.
The 1867 onslaught was the worst ever to hit Texas. Starting as usual at the port of Galveston, a stampede of panic-stricken souls spread the pestilence to the mainland. From Galveston south to Corpus Christi and 125 miles deep into the interior of the state, rare was the settlement that escaped the scourge. In a matter of weeks, thousands succumbed.
Mere statistics cannot convey the human suffering that yellow fever left in its cruel wake. A poignant scene in Galveston, where two children lingered at death’s door, was repeated in countless Texas homes.
“Papa, what is the matter with my brother?” a boy asked in a hoarse whisper.
“He is very ill, Calvin.”
“Is he dying?” inquired the child.
“Yes,” the heartbroken father answered.
“Tell him to wait for me. I am dying, too, Papa.”
When yellow fever struck Galveston again in 1870, Houston responded with an armed quarantine. This stern precaution spared inland Texans the horror of another epidemic until the early 1900s, when researchers finally conquered Yellow Jack.
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