prevalence of yellow fever (first brought to Havana, it is thought, in 1761, from Vera Cruz), the reputation of the city as regards health was long very bad. The practical extermination of yellow fever during the U.S. military occupation following 1899 was a remarkable achievement. In 1895–1899, owing to the war, there were few non-immune persons in the city, and there was no trouble with the fever, but from the autumn of 1899 a heavy immigration from Spain began, and a fever epidemic was raging in 1900. The American military authorities found that the most extraordinary measures for cleansing the city—involving repeated house-to-house inspection, enforced cleanliness, improved drainage and sewerage, the destruction of various public buildings, and thorough cleansing of the streets—although decidedly effective in reducing the general death-rate of the city (average, 1890–1899, 45.83; 1900, 24.40; 1901, 22.11; 1902, 20.63; general death-rate of U.S. soldiers in 1898, 67.94; in 1901–1902, 7.00), apparently did not affect yellow fever at all. In 1900–1901 Major Walter Reed (1851–1902), a surgeon in the United States army, proved by experiments on voluntary human subjects that the infection was spread by the Stegomyia mosquito,[1] and the prevention of the disease was then undertaken by Major William C. Gorgas—all patients being screened and mosquitoes practically exterminated.[2] The number of subsequent deaths from yellow fever has depended solely on the degree to which the necessary precautionary measures were taken.
The entire administrative system of the island, when a Spanish colony, was centred at Havana. Under the republic this remains the capital and the residence of the president, the supreme court, Congress when in session and the chief administrative officers. None of the public services was good in the Spanish period, except the water-supply, which was excellent. The water is derived from the Vento springs, 9 m. from Havana, and is conducted through aqueducts constructed between 1859 and 1894 at a cost of some $5,000,000. About 40,000,000 gallons are supplied daily. The system is owned by the municipality. The older Fernando VII. aqueduct (1831–1835) is still usable in case of need; its supply was the Almendares river (until long after the construction of this, a still older aqueduct, opened at the end of the 16th century, was in use). The sewerage system and conditions of house sanitation were found extremely inadequate when the American army occupied the city in 1899. Several public buildings were so foul that they were demolished and burned. The improvement since the end of Spanish rule has been steady.
History.—Havana, originally founded by Diego Velasquez in 1514 on an unhealthy site near the present Batabanó (pop. in 1907, 15,435, including attached country districts), on the south coast, was soon removed to its present position, was granted an ayuntamiento (town council), and shortly came to be considered one of the most important places in the New World. Its commanding position gained it in 1634, by royal decree, the title of “Llave del Nuevo Mundo y Antemural de las Indias Occidentales” (Key of the New World and Bulwark of the West Indies), in reference to which it bears on its coat of arms a symbolic key and representations of the Morro, Punta and Fuerza. In the history of the place in the 16th century few things stand out except the investments by buccaneers: in 1537 it was sacked and burned, and in 1555 plundered by French buccaneers, and in 1586 it was threatened by Drake. In 1589 Philip II. of Spain ordered the erection of the Punta and the Morro. In the same year the residence of the governor of the island was moved from Santiago de Cuba to Havana. Philip II. granted Havana the title of “ciudad” in 1592. Sugar plantations in the environs appeared before the end of the 16th century. The population of the city, probably about 3000 at the beginning of the 17th century, was doubled in the years following 1655 by the coming of Spaniards from Jamaica. In the course of the 17th century the port became the great rendezvous for the royal merchant and treasure fleets that monopolized trade with America, and the commercial centre of the Spanish-American possessions. It was blockaded four times by the Dutch (who were continually molesting the treasure fleets) in the first half of the 17th century. In 1671 the city walls were begun; they were completed in 1702. The European wars of the 17th and 18th centuries were marked by various incidents in local history. After the end of the Spanish War of Succession (1713) came a period of comparative prosperity in slave-trading and general commerce. The creation in 1740 of a monopolistic trading-company was an event of importance in the history of the island. English squadrons threatened the city several times in the first half of the 18th century, but it was not until 1762 that an investment, made by Admiral Sir George Pocock and the earl of Albemarle, was successful. The siege lasted from June to August and was attended by heavy loss to both besiegers and besieged. The British commanders wrung great sums from the church and the city as prize of war and price of good order. By the treaty of the 10th of February 1763, at the close of the Seven Years’ War, Havana was restored to Spain in exchange for the Floridas. The English turned over the control of the city on the 6th of July. Their occupation greatly stimulated commerce, and from it dates the modern history of the city and of the island (see Cuba). The gradual removal of obstacles from the commerce of the island from 1766 to 1818 particularly benefited Havana. At the end of the 18th century the city was one of the seven or eight great commercial centres of the world, and in the first quarter of the 19th century was a rival in population and in trade of Rio Janeiro, Buenos Aires and New York. In 1789 a bishopric was created at Havana suffragan to the archbishopric at Santiago. From the end of the 18th century Havana, as the centre of government, was the centre of movement and interest. During the administration of Miguel Tacón Havana was improved by many important public works; his name is frequent in the nomenclature of the city. The railway from Havana to Güines was built between 1835 and 1838. Fifty Americans under Lieut. Crittenden, members of the Bahia Honda filibustering expedition of Narciso Lopez, were shot at Fort Atarés in 1851. Like the rest of Cuba, Havana has frequently suffered severely from hurricanes, the most violent being those of 1768 (St Theresa’s), 1810 and 1846. The destruction of the U.S. battleship “Maine” in the harbour of Havana on the 15th of February 1898 was an influential factor in causing the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, and during the war the city was blockaded by a United States fleet.
See J. de la Pezuela, Diccionario de la Isla de Cuba, vol. iii. (Madrid, 1863), for minute details of history, administration and economic conditions down to 1862; J. M. de la Torre, Lo que fuimos y lo que somos, ó la Habana antigua y moderna (Habana, 1857); P. J. Guitéras, Historia de la conquista de la Habana 1762 (Philadelphia, 1856); J. de la Pezuela, Sitio y rendicion de la Habana en 1762 (Madrid, 1859); A. Bachiller y Morales, Monografía historica (Habana, 1883), minutely covering the English occupation (the best account) of 1762–1763; Maria de los Mercedes, comtesse de Merlin, La Havana (3 vols., Paris, 1844); and the works cited under Cuba.
HAVANT, a market-town in the Fareham parliamentary division of Hampshire, England, 67 m. S.W. from London by the London & South Western and the London, Brighton & South Coast railways. Pop. of urban district (1901), 3837. The urban district of Warblington, 1 m. S.E. (pop. 3639), has a fine church, Norman and later, with traces of pre-Norman work, and some remains of a Tudor castle. Havant lies in a flat coastal district, near the head of Langstone Harbour, a wide shallow inlet of the English Channel. The church of St Faith was largely rebuilt in 1875, but retains some good Early English work. There are breweries and tanneries, and the manufacture of parchment is carried on. Off the mainland near Havant lies Hayling, a flat island of irregular form lying between the harbours of Langstone and Chichester. It measures 4 m. in length from N. to S., and is nearly the same in breadth at the south, but the breadth generally is about 112 m. It is well wooded and fertile. A railway serves the village of South Hayling, which is in some
- ↑ Dr Carlos Finlay of Havana, arguing from the coincidence between the climatic limitation of yellow fever and the geographical limitation of the mosquito, urged (1881 sqq.) that there was some relation between the disease and the insect. Reed worked from the observation of Dr H. R. Carter (U.S. Marine Hospital Service) that although the incubation of the disease was 5 days, 15 to 20 days had to elapse before the “infection” of the house, and from Ross’s demonstration of the part played in malaria by the Anopheles. See H A. Kelly, Walter Reed and Yellow Fever (New York, 1907).
- ↑ The average number of deaths from yellow fever annually from 1885 (when reliable registration began) to 1898 was 455; maximum 1282 in 1896 (supposed average for 4 years, 1856–1859, being 1489.8 and for 7 years, 1873–1879, 1395.1), minimum 136, in 1898; average deaths of military, 1885–1898, 278.4 (in 1896–1897 constituting 1966 out of a total of 2140); deaths of American soldiers, 1899–1900, 18 out of 431.
