Fantasy Football Challenge - Football Fanatics Library

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bunk previously occupied by his dead comrade. More than this; the three men who handled the clothing and washed the linen of those who had died during the last month were still in perfect health. Here we seemed to be in the presence of the same phenomenon remarked by Captain Stone in reference to his case at Santa Clara, and before that by several investigators of yellow fever epidemics; the infection at a distance, the harmless condition of bedding and clothing of the sick; the possibility that some insect might be concerned in spreading the disease deeply impressed us and Major Reed mentions the circumstance in his later writings. This was really the first time that the mosquito transmission theory was seriously considered by members of the board, and it was decided that, although discredited by the repeated failure of its most ardent supporter, Dr. Carlos J. Finlay, of Havana, to demonstrate it, the matter should be taken up by the board and thoroughly sifted. The removal of the troops out of Pinar del Rio was the means of at once checking the propagation of the disease. On the first day of August the board met and after due deliberation determined to investigate mosquitoes in connection with the spread of yellow fever. As Dr. Lazear was the only one of us who had had any experience in mosquito work, Major Reed thought proper that he should take charge of this part of the investigation in the beginning, while we, Carroll and I, continued with the other work on hand, at the same time gradually becoming familiar with the manipulations necessary in dealing with the insects. A visit was now made to Dr. Finlay, who, much elated at the news that the board was about to investigate his pet theory, the transmission of yellow fever from man to man by mosquitoes, very kindly explained to us many points regarding the life of the one kind he thought most guilty and ended by furnishing us with a number of eggs which, laid by a female mosquito nearly a month before, had remained unhatched on the inside of a half empty bowl of water in his library. Much to our disappointment and regret, during the first week of August, Major Reed was recalled to Washington that he might, in collaboration with Drs. Vaughan and Shakespeare, complete the report upon "Typhoid Fever in the Army." Thus we were deprived of his able counsel during the first part of the mosquito research. Major Reed was detained longer than he expected and could not return to Cuba until early in October, several days after Lazear's death. The mosquito eggs obtained from Dr. Finlay hatched out in due time; the insects sent to Washington for their exact classification were declared by Dr. L. O. Howard, entomologist to the Agricultural Department, to be Culex fasciatus. Later, they have been called Stegomyia fasciatus and now go under the name of Stegomyia calopus (Aedes cal.). Lazear applied some of these mosquitoes to cases of yellow fever at "Las Animas" Hospital, keeping them in separate glass tubes properly labeled, and every thing connected with their bitings was carefully recorded; the original batch soon died and the work was carried on with subsequent generations from the same. The lack of material at Quemados caused us to remove our field of action to Havana, where cases of yellow fever continued to appear. We met almost every day at "Las Animas" Hospital, where Lazear was trying to infect his mosquitoes, or now and then I performed autopsy upon a case, and Carroll secured sufficient cultures to last him for several days of bacteriological investigation. Considering that, in case our surmise as to the insect's action should prove to be correct, it was dangerous to introduce infected mosquitoes amongst a population of 1,400 non-immunes at Camp Columbia, Dr. Lazear thought best to keep his presumably infected insects in my laboratory at the Military Hospital No. 1, from where he carried them back and forth to the patients who were periodically bitten. Incidentally, after the mosquitoes fed upon the yellow fever patients, they were applied, at intervals of two or three days, to whoever would consent to run the risk of contracting yellow fever in this way; needless to say, current opinion was against this probability and as time passed and numerous individuals who had been bitten by insects which had previously fed upon yellow fever blood remained unaffected, I must confess that even the members of the board, who were rather sanguine in their expectations, became somewhat discouraged and their faith in success very much shaken. No secret was made of our attempts to infect mosquitoes; in fact many local physicians became intensely interested, and Lazear and his tubes were the subject of much comment on the part of the Havana doctors, who nearly twenty years before had watched and laughed at Dr. Finlay, then bent apparently upon the same quest in which we were now engaged. Dr. Finlay himself was somewhat chagrined when he learned of our failure to infect any one with mosquitoes, but, like a true believer, was inclined to attribute this negative result more to some defect in our technique than to any flaw in his favorite theory. Although the board had thought proper to run the same risks, if any, as those who willingly and knowingly subjected themselves to the bites of the supposedly infected insects, opportunity did not offer itself readily, since Major Reed was away in Washington and Carroll, at Camp Columbia, engrossed in his bacteriological investigations came to Havana only when an autopsy was on hand or a particularly interesting case came up for study. I was considered an immune, a fact that I would not like to have tested, for though born in the island of Cuba, I had practically lived all my life away from a yellow fever zone; it was therefore presumed that I ran no risk in allowing mosquitoes to bite me, as I frequently did, just to feed them blood, whether they had previously sucked from yellow fever cases or not. And so, time passed and several Americans and Spaniards had subjected themselves in a sporting mood to be bitten by the infected (?) mosquitoes without causing any untoward results, when Lazear applied to himself (August 16, 1900) a mosquito which ten days before had fed upon a mild case of yellow fever in the fifth day of his disease; the fact that

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