242 MOSQUITOES OF NORTH AMERICA 



yellow-fever patients in the city of Havana. Their work, however, was not 

 carried to a satisfactory end and they stated that they had found no conclusive 

 evidence that this bacillus was responsible for yellow fever. About the same 

 time Archinard and Woodson, at New Orleans, obtained results which they con- 

 sidered confirmatory of Sanarelli's claim. Afterwards it was shown by Reed 

 and Carroll that the organism in question was identical with the bacillus of hog 

 cholera and in no way concerned with yellow fever. 



FINLAVS WORK. 



In 1881 Dr. Carlos Pinlay, of Havana, proposed the theory that yellow fever, 

 whatever its cause may be, is conveyed by means of a certain mosquito {Culex 

 mosquito —. Aedes calopus) from man to man, and not in the manner of ordi- 

 nary contagious or infectious diseases. His paper, published in the " Anales de 

 la Real Academia de Ciencias medicas, fisicas y naturales de la Habana," shows 

 that he had carefully studied the habits of house mosquitoes and had determined 

 all the factors in the life-history of Aiides calopus which have since been shown 

 to be essential in its role of transmitter of the disease. It was this careful study 

 of the mosquito and the disease, conducted through many years in the most 

 favorable locality, in the city of Havana, that gave him a firm conviction that the 

 two were interdependent. On this account his theory has true scientific merit, 

 it was based on intensive study, and not, as had been the case with his prede- 

 cessors, on vague suspicions or flights of the imagination. 



Subsequently Finlay published a number of important papers, in which his 

 views were modified from time to time. He thought out carefully the question 

 of immunization and concluded that this was brought about by mild infection, 

 through the bite of single mosquitoes. In one of his papers he published experi- 

 ments with 100 individuals, producing 3 cases of mild fever. None of the cases, 

 however, was under his full control, and as the possibility of other methods of 

 contracting the disease was not excluded his claims were not accepted. There- 

 fore, his theory, while it was received with interest, was not considered to be 

 proved. 



DR. A. C. SMITH'S EXPERIMENT. 



An interesting experiment, generally overlooked, was tried, based on the ideas 

 of Finlay of the mosquito dissemination of yellow fever, in the summer of 1897 

 and prior to the exact work of the United States Army Board in Havana, shown 

 in the following paragraph, by Past Surgeon A. C. Smith, of the then U. S. 

 Marine-Hospital Service (now the IT. S. Public Health and Marine-Hospital 

 Service). Doctor Smith screened all the windows and doors of the National 

 Quarantine Station on Ship Island, Gulf of Mexico, and no case of yellow fever 

 developed at the station, although he treated some thirty cases of the disease 

 brought there by infected vessels. We take this statement from a paper by Dr. 

 P. H. Bailhache, Surgeon U. S. Public Health and Marine-Hospital Service, 

 read before the first anti-mosquito convention in New York, in 1903. 



