This thesis won the gold medal offered by the faculty for the best thesis in 1874. Booth's “History of the Epidemic of Shreveport, Louisiana 1873” a 131-page longhand volume, contains analyses of weather conditions in Shreveport, a hand drawn map of the city showing sites where the fever was first reported, and case descriptions including Booth’s own bout with the disease. His remarks on the poor sanitary conditions under carpetbagger municipal leaders are worth noting. Most of the work concerns the differences between malaria and yellow fever as Booth observed the two. He described the symptoms, treatment and mortality of the epidemic, and discusses the efficacy of quinine as a prophylactic against yellow fever.
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Augustine Rue Booth was a Louisiana native who attended the University of Louisville Department of Medicine from 1872 to 1874 when he graduated. Booth served as the acting house surgeon at the Hospital of Shreveport during the yellow fever epidemic August through October, 1873. Dr. Booth died in Shreveport in late 1900 at age 56 of a lingering illness. He was Acting Assistant Surgeon of the U.S. Marine Hospital Service at Shreveport at the time of his death.
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