DISEASE EELATION SUSPECTED 187 



In 1848 Dr. J. C. ISTott published a paper on the origin of yellow fever in the 

 ISTew Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, in which he expressed his belief in 

 the insect transmission of yellow fever and malaria. He called attention to the 

 fact that yellow fever occurs under conditions and in places favoring the de- 

 velopment of insects, and he thought it was spread from one locality to another 

 by them. He thought it likely that the disease itself is produced by micro- 

 organisms. 



Eecently Dr. A. Agramonte, in an article in the Cronica Medico-Quirurgica 

 de la Habana, and quoted by the British Medical Journal, calls attention to the 

 pioneer suggestions of Louis Daniel Beauperthuy, born in Guadeloupe in 1808. 

 Writing in the Gaceta Official de Cumana (Venezuela), in May, 1853, Beau- 

 perthuy says that yellow fever is due to the same cause as that producing inter- 

 mittent fever, and that it is by no means to be regarded as a contagious dis- 

 ease. It develops under conditions favoring the development of mosquitoes. 

 The mosquito introduces into the circulation of a person bitten a poison which 

 softens the red blood corpuscles, causes their rupture, and facilitates the mixing 

 of the coloring matter with the serum. There are many mosquitoes but not all 

 are equally dangerous ; most so are those with legs striped with white and partly a 

 household kind. He further states that remittent, intermittent and pernicious 

 fevers, like yellow fever, have as their cause an animal or vegeto-animal virus 

 which is inoculated into the human body. He supposed that this poison was 

 sucked up by the mosquitoes from decomposing substances, exposed at low tide, 

 on the seashore and in the mangrove swamps and pointed out that yellow fever 

 invariably breaks out in such places. These fevers are grave in proportion to 

 the abundance of mosquitoes. It is not the air from marshes, nor stagnant 

 water, that makes such regions unhealthy, but the presence of mosquitoes. 

 Beauperthuy wrote most fully to the journal above mentioned, but he made 

 more than one communication to the Academic des Sciences, of Paris. "We have 

 seen one of his communications, dated January 18, 1856, entitled : " Eesearches 

 into the cause of Asiatic cholera, into that of yellow fever and of marsh fever," 

 in which he states that as early as 1839 his investigations in unhealthy localities 

 in South America convinced him that the intermittent or so-called marsh fevers 

 are due to a vegeto-animal virus inoculated into man by mosquitoes. His idea, 

 however, was that this virus was extracted by the mosquitoes from decomposing 

 substances. 



Dr. Oswaldo Cruz, director of the Public Health Service of Brazil, in a recent 

 paper (Public Health Eeports, TJ. S. P. H. and M. H. Service, Nov. 19, 1909) 

 calls attention to the fact that in Brazil, before the American experiments. Dr. 

 Utingguassu and afterwards Dr. Stapler, of Sao Paulo, also made references to 

 the transmission of yellow fever by mosquitoes. It is probable that there were 

 other physicians in advance of their times who, like Nott and Beauperthuy, held 

 similar ideas, but if they expressed them, or if they wrote about them, their words 

 have not been preserved. 



Many curious ideas about the possible relation between mosquitoes and disease 

 have been published. For example, in a paper entitled " Curious Facts Concern- 



