Yellow fever is a viral disease transmitted by the bite of mosquitoes. Since the 17th century, it has been a source of many devastating epidemics in Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Yellow Fever was first reported in Cuba in 1649. Between 1895 and 1898 the disease killed an estimated 16,000 Spanish troops there and sickened tens of thousands more. More than 2,000 American soldiers contracted yellow fever during the Cuban campaign of the Spanish-American War. General William Shafter, who was in charge of the Cuban invasion said the disease was a “thousand times harder to stand up against than the missiles of the enemy.”