Fantasy Football Challenge - Football Fanatics Library

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Popular Science Monthly

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no infection resulted, for Lazear continued in excellent health for a space of time far beyond the usual period of incubation, served to discredit the mosquito theory in the opinion of the investigators to a degree almost beyond redemption, and the most enthusiastic, Dr. Lazear himself, was almost ready to "throw up the sponge." I had as laboratory attendant a young American, a private belonging to the Hospital Corps of the Army, who more than once had bared his arm to allow a weak mosquito a fair meal with which to regain its apparently waning strength; Loud, for that was his name, derided the idea that such a little beast could do so much harm as we seemed ready to accuse it of, although he was familiar with the destruction caused by bacteria, but then, he used to say, "bacterial work in armies of more than a million bugs at the same time and no one would be d---- fool enough to let more than one or two gnats sting him at once." This state of things, the gradual loss of faith in the danger which mosquitoes seemed to possess, led Dr. Lazear to relax a little and become less scrupulous in his care of the insects, and often, after applying them to patients, if pressed for time, he would take them away with him to his laboratory at Columbia Barracks, where, the season being then quite warm, they could be kept as comfortably as at the Military Hospital laboratory. Thus it happened that on the twenty-seventh of August he had spent the whole morning at "Las Animas" Hospital getting his mosquitoes to take yellow-fever blood: the procedure was very simple; each insect was contained in a glass tube covered by a wad of cotton, the same as is done with bacterial cultures. As the mouth of the tube is turned downwards, the insect usually flies towards the bottom of the tube (upwards), then the latter is uncovered rapidly and the open mouth placed upon the forearm or the abdomen of the patient; after a few moments the mosquito drops upon the skin and if hungry will immediately start operations; when full, by gently shaking the tube, the insect is made to fly upwards again and the cotton plug replaced without difficulty. It so happened that this rather tedious work, on the day above mentioned, lasted until nearly the noon hour, so that Lazear, instead of leaving the tubes at the Military Hospital, took them all with him to Camp Columbia: among them was one insect that for some reason or other had failed to take blood when offered to it at "Las Animas" Hospital. This mosquito had been hatched in the laboratory and in due time fed upon yellow-fever blood from a severe case on August 15, that is, twelve days before, the patient then being in the second day of his illness; also at three other times, six days, four days and two days before. Of course, at the time, no particular attention had been drawn to this insect, except that it refused to suck blood when tempted that morning. After luncheon that day, as Carroll and Lazear were in the laboratory attending to their respective work, the conversation turning upon the mosquitoes and their apparent harmlessness, Lazear remarked how one of them had failed to take blood, at which Carroll thought that he might try to feed it, as otherwise it was liable to die before next day (the insect seemed weak and tired); the tube was carefully held first by Lazear and then by Carroll himself, for a considerable length of time, upon his forearm, before the mosquito decided to introduce its proboscis. This insect was again fed from a yellow fever case at "Las Animas" Hospital on the twenty-ninth, two days later, Dr. Carroll being present, though not feeling very well, as it was afterwards ascertained. We three left the yellow-fever hospital together that afternoon; I got down from the doherty-wagon where the road forks, going on to the Military Hospital, while Carroll and Lazear continued on their way to Camp Columbia. On the following day, Lazear telephoned to me in the evening, to say that Carroll was down with a chill after a sea bath taken at the beach, a mile and a half from Camp, and that they suspected he had malaria; we therefore made an appointment to examine his blood together the following morning. When I reached Camp Columbia I found that Carroll had been examining his own blood early that morning, not finding any malarial parasites; he told me he thought he had "caught cold" at the beach: his suffused face, blood-shot eyes and general appearance, in spite of his efforts at gaiety and unconcern, shocked me beyond words. The possibility of his having yellow fever did not occur to him just then; when it did, two days later, he declared he must have caught it at my autopsy room in the Military Hospital, or at "Las Animas" Hospital, where he had been two days before taking sick. Although we insisted that he should go to bed in his quarters, we could only get him to rest upon a lounge, until the afternoon, when he felt too sick and had to take to his bed. Lazear and I were almost panic-stricken when we realized that Carroll had yellow fever. We searched for all possibilities that might throw the blame for his infection upon any other source than the mosquito which bit him four days before; Lazear, poor fellow, in his desire to exculpate himself, as he related to me the details of Carroll's mosquito experiment, repeatedly mentioned the fact that he himself had been bitten two weeks before without any effect therefrom and finally, what seemed to relieve his mind to some extent, was the thought that Carroll offered himself to feed the mosquito and that he held the tube upon his own arm until the work was consummated. I have mentioned before that, as Lazear and I, vaguely hoping to find malarial parasites in Carroll's blood, sat looking into our microscopes that morning, the idea that the mosquito was what brought him down gradually took hold of our minds, but as our colleague had been exposed to infection in other ways, by visiting the yellow fever hospital "Las Animas," as well as the infected city of Havana, it was necessary to subject that same mosquito to another test and hence the inoculation of Private Dean, which is described in the opening chapter of this history. TERMINATION OF THE FIRST SERIES OF MOSQUITO EXPERIMENTS. DEATH OF LAZEAR. The month of September, 1900, was fraught with worry and

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