Yellow Fever

NEW YORK - Bioterrorists want a horrible disease that is easy to spread and that has a high fatality rate. So, thought terrorists during the Civil War, what better disease than yellow fever? It kills within days, causing a hemorrhagic fever that makes victims bleed from the mouth and nose and vomit a black substance that resembles coffee grounds but consists largely of dried blood. There was no effective treatment for yellow fever and no way to prevent it, and it could spread rapidly through a city, causing panic and social disruption.

BETHESDA - President Bush turned a spade of dirt to ceremonially launch a major expansion of one of the nation's premier military hospitals yesterday, saying he hoped a new Walter Reed National Military Medical Center "will be the site of many miracles of healing." Flanked by officers, soldiers and civilian military leaders, Bush joined Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Montgomery County and Maryland Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown in dipping a gold-painted shovel into a container of soil in the shadow of the art deco tower that is the centerpiece of the National Naval Medical Center.

Open almost any home magazine and you can't miss them: Like sunflowers sprouting in a summer field, yellow walls are popping up all over the place.They range from barely-there hints of parchment and buttercream to screeching shades of Mello-Yello and Post-it Note. They can be traditional, like the Dijon gold walls of a Greek Revival staircase in Country Home. Or funky, like the acid-yellow walls of a retro '60s kitchen in a recent issue of Home magazine.If pale pink walls were the rage of the '80s, then yellow walls (especially the softer, golden shades)

One was a distinguished Army surgeon, destined to go down in history as the man who solved one of medicine's most baffling and vexing mysteries. The other, a lesser-known clinician who'd studied in Baltimore, was a fearless medical adventurer who placed his own life on the line in the search for a cure. Together, just more than a century ago, Walter Reed and James Carroll helped rid the world of the yellow fever menace - but not before surviving a personal relationship that veered from mutual respect to jealousy and distrust before their time together was through.

PHILADELPHIA - The nation's capital was struck by a plague so terrible that 10 percent of the population died in a matter of months. People panicked. Everyone who could fled the city. Politicians seized the moment to try to gain advantages over their opponents. An instant book appeared and became an international best seller, snapped up by some who wanted to read the gruesome details of the disease and its accompanying social disruption, and by others who wanted to pore over its list of the dead.

Konrad Zuse, 85, whose Nazi-era constructions of second-hand sheet metal, glass plates, cranks and punch cards helped pioneer the modern digital computer, died of heart failure Monday in Berlin.Mr. Zuse (pronounced ZSOO-zah) was a Berlin-born engineer and lifelong tinkerer who created a series of machines in the 1930s and early 1940s that were among the world's first calculators and computers.His crude machines embraced the same binary digital concept that is the basis for today's computers.

Yellow fever, once known as "the prevailing fever" or yellow jack for the pennant flown over ships whose passengers and crew were infected with the deadly disease, first swept Baltimore in 1794, killing 360. In 1797, it returned, and 545 perished. Through the 18th, 19th and into the early 20th centuries, the yellow plague killed thousands across the southeastern U.S. Some experts estimate that one in every 10 died after being infected. The staggering number of deaths and the yellow fever epidemics in Charleston, S.C., Norfolk, New Orleans and Mobile, Ala., played a fundamental role in the establishment of the U.S. Public Health Service.

One was a distinguished Army surgeon, destined to go down in history as the man who solved one of medicine's most baffling and vexing mysteries. The other, a lesser-known clinician who'd studied in Baltimore, was a fearless medical adventurer who placed his own life on the line in the search for a cure. Together, just more than a century ago, Walter Reed and James Carroll helped rid the world of the yellow fever menace - but not before surviving a personal relationship that veered from mutual respect to jealousy and distrust before their time together was through.

HELLO, is this the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta?""Yes, it is.""This is Al Steele of Timonium, Md., and I am calling because my son has just graduated from college and he's coming home. He hasn't cleaned his room for four years and his mother and I were wondering what shots we needed.""I see. Can you describe the room to us?""It's medium sized. The bed is against the wall. He hasn't made it since we came up for Parents Day during his freshman year. There's a pile of dirty clothing by his bed."

Two centuries ago this month, Baltimore City appointed its first health officers, two "quarantining physicians" who were charged with dealing with the threat of yellow fever. Even though scientists of the day didn't yet understand that the fever was spread by a mosquito, the challenge facing those two doctors was much simpler than those facing public health officials in the city today.Nothing could better illustrate those changes than the controversy swirling around one of the health department's top priorities, a plan to institute a needle-exchange program among the city's intravenous drug abusers.

The hajj - the pilgrimage to Islam's holy city of Mecca - is required of all Muslims once in their lifetime, if they are physically and financially capable of making the journey. It is one of the five pillars of Islam, following the footsteps of the Prophet Muhammad, reminding Muslims of their commitment to God and of Judgment Day. As this year's hajj approached, with more than 2 million pilgrims heading to Mecca, Saudi authorities prepared to prevent an epidemic of SARS, meningitis or yellow fever and, at the last minute, worried about avian flu. As usual, they made plans for crowd control in Mina, where 180 people were killed in a stampede in 1998.

Yellow Submarine is the 1968 cartoon movie in which the Beatles travel the deep seas to Pepperland, where Sgt. Pepper's Band is being held captive by the Blue Meanies. The Fab Four appear as themselves briefly, at the end. The film is a classic -- and a hot book subject nowadays is how the famous films, one by one, came to be made. Robert R. Hieronimus began assembling Yellow Submarine material in the 1970s; now his book, Inside the Yellow Submarine (Krause, 432 pages, $24.95) is out. So let listeners to Dr. Bob and his wife Zoh, hosts of a long-running futurist and environmentalist radio program, make whoopee: The book, based on interviews with dozens of people from the original film crew, is good stuff -- lively, insightful and authoritative.

NEW YORK - Bioterrorists want a horrible disease that is easy to spread and that has a high fatality rate. So, thought terrorists during the Civil War, what better disease than yellow fever? It kills within days, causing a hemorrhagic fever that makes victims bleed from the mouth and nose and vomit a black substance that resembles coffee grounds but consists largely of dried blood. There was no effective treatment for yellow fever and no way to prevent it, and it could spread rapidly through a city, causing panic and social disruption.

PHILADELPHIA - The nation's capital was struck by a plague so terrible that 10 percent of the population died in a matter of months. People panicked. Everyone who could fled the city. Politicians seized the moment to try to gain advantages over their opponents. An instant book appeared and became an international best seller, snapped up by some who wanted to read the gruesome details of the disease and its accompanying social disruption, and by others who wanted to pore over its list of the dead.

WASHINGTON - When women in long dresses and men in black ties ambled to the post office in days of old, they sometimes found their letters with holes whacked through them or their envelopes browned from smoke or covered in the peculiar smell of some nasty chemical. Far from angry, the patrons were relieved. To them, it meant the mail had been sanitized. The emergence of anthrax is the most serious challenge ever to the U.S. Postal Service, but history is replete with all kinds of attacks on the mail - and efforts to rid the system of biological threats go back decades, even centuries.

Yellow fever, once known as "the prevailing fever" or yellow jack for the pennant flown over ships whose passengers and crew were infected with the deadly disease, first swept Baltimore in 1794, killing 360. In 1797, it returned, and 545 perished. Through the 18th, 19th and into the early 20th centuries, the yellow plague killed thousands across the southeastern U.S. Some experts estimate that one in every 10 died after being infected. The staggering number of deaths and the yellow fever epidemics in Charleston, S.C., Norfolk, New Orleans and Mobile, Ala., played a fundamental role in the establishment of the U.S. Public Health Service.

It's a hit on MTV, but the band Bloodhound Gang will find itself being tuned out by many students at the University of Maryland, College Park tomorrow night. Citing song lyrics they say are extraordinarily offensive, several student groups have threatened public demonstrations, boycotts and letters urging other acts to cancel if the group is not pulled from the lineup scheduled to perform as part of the campus' annual Art Attack event. Particularly upset are students of Asian descent, who say the band's lyrics are racially charged and culturally insensitive.

In the 1993-'94 race, the helmsman aboard the boat Intrum Justitia was hit so hard by a wave, his body bent the wheel.A former Vietnam prisoner of war visited the members of Maryland's team, Chessie Racing, and coached them on survival skills. The focus of the talk: staying sane during extremely long periods in claustrophobic spaces.In the 1989-90 race, a Russian boat entered the race with an inexperienced skipper. After a month on the boat, he disappeared in the woods in Uruguay during a stopover and hanged himself in a remote spot near Punta del Este.

It's a hit on MTV, but the band Bloodhound Gang will find itself being tuned out by many students at the University of Maryland, College Park tomorrow night. Citing song lyrics they say are extraordinarily offensive, several student groups have threatened public demonstrations, boycotts and letters urging other acts to cancel if the group is not pulled from the lineup scheduled to perform as part of the campus' annual Art Attack event. Particularly upset are students of Asian descent, who say the band's lyrics are racially charged and culturally insensitive.

In the 1993-'94 race, the helmsman aboard the boat Intrum Justitia was hit so hard by a wave, his body bent the wheel.A former Vietnam prisoner of war visited the members of Maryland's team, Chessie Racing, and coached them on survival skills. The focus of the talk: staying sane during extremely long periods in claustrophobic spaces.In the 1989-90 race, a Russian boat entered the race with an inexperienced skipper. After a month on the boat, he disappeared in the woods in Uruguay during a stopover and hanged himself in a remote spot near Punta del Este.