Historic Disease Data as Epidemiological Resource: Searching for the Origin and Local Basic Reproduction Number of the 1878 Yellow Fever Epidemic in Memphis, Tennessee

Emerging and reemerging infectious diseases continue to pose considerable regional and global concerns. A vital contribution to be made by geographers is in developing an understanding of the spatial structure of these epidemics across various scales. Confidentiality concerns and a general lack of individual data from many developing world areas mean that individual or subneighborhood-scale epidemic information is often unavailable. One alternative potential source of data is historical epidemics. Although these data exist in the form of board of health reports, these should not be considered complete, and the onus is on the researcher to perform due diligence on data validation and identifying supplementary spatial and cultural context. This article presents an example of such a methodological task for the 1878 yellow fever epidemic of Memphis, which leads to exploration of two important spatial questions: the correct origin of the epidemic in the city and its associated local basic reproduction number, which is the number of ensuing cases stemming from an original. This article should be viewed as a template for a subsequent series of fine-scale historical epidemic analyses, which together can produce an important conduit into further development of spatial epidemiological theory.