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HISTORY OF THE CONTROL OF YELLOW FEVER 487 



hundred and twenty-five thousand cases and twelve deaths from 

 yellow fever in the United States. Since 1905 not a single case 

 has been reported. Havana and Rio de Janeiro used to be cen- 

 ters of infection. To-day, due to the control of yellow fever, they 

 are health and vacation resorts. There is still one very bad dis- 

 trict in western Africa. Efforts are now being made to control 

 the fever there. 



History of the control of yellow fever. It is claimed that yellow 

 fever was the disease that nearly annihilated the second expedi- 

 tion of Columbus in Santo Domingo in 1495. 



Yellow fever was so bad in certain parts of Cuba that no one 

 could live there safely. In 1900, after the Spanish-American 

 War, a commission was appointed to make an investigation of 

 yellow fever in Havana. The 

 commission was composed of 

 Major Walter Reed, a bacteriol- 

 ogist, and Dr. James Carroll, 

 Dr. Jesse W. Lazear, and Dr. 

 Aristides Agramonte. Dr. Reed 

 could not find a microorganism in 

 the blood of the infected people. 

 He decided that if the fever 

 were caused by a bacterium, the 

 nurses handling the patients 

 would contract the disease. This 

 did not seem to be true. He also 

 observed that members of the 

 same family did not seem to get 

 the disease from each other. 

 At the end of two or three 

 weeks, people in the neighbor- 

 hood of the original cases would 

 contract the disease. This 



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Photomicrograph of a mosquito larva. 



