In 1855, the nation turned its attention in shock toward the tragedy unfolding in Norfolk and Portsmouth.
The American public clamored for fresh reports about the latest death tolls in the Virginia port cities, the yellow fever with a 33% mortality rate.
The country was horrified by the devastation, now chronicled in a new book, “The Fever: The Most Fatal Plague in American History,” by Lon Wagner.
Wagner, who lives in Roanoke, documents how yellow fever silenced the bustling streets of two flourishing cities and forever altered the trajectory of Hampton Roads.
“Norfolk and Portsmouth both lost key people who would have been leaders for those cities for decades to come,” he said in an interview. “So it makes you wonder how it affected the fate of these two places at a key time of growth, when they were really building.”
On Thursday, Wagner will give a talk at Prince Books in Norfolk about the book, which began as a 14-part series he wrote as a reporter for The Virginian-Pilot in 2005. The book is a culmination of years of research, collecting and cataloguing historical accounts found in 1800s newspapers, personal stories preserved in diaries, and patient histories recorded during the 100-day epidemic by the Portsmouth Medical Center.