294 MOSQUITOES OF NORTH AMERICA 



tation on every hand growing unprotected and severe cold is unknown. Yet the 

 nights are cold, even in summer, and it is to this condition, the low minimum 

 nightly temperatures, that the freedom from Aedes calopus, and consequently 

 from yellow-fever epidemics, is due. 



ORIGINAL HOME OF AEDES CALOPUS. 



The original habitat of this mosquito must clearly be identical with that of 

 yellow fever, for it is inconceivable that this parasite would have developed in 

 any other region than the original home of its obligatory host. Early history 

 points very strongly to the West Indies and adjacent main-land as that home. 

 Finlay, in a paper read February 19, 1902, before the Pan-American Sanitary 

 Congress, gave good evidence that yellow fever was endemic in America before 

 the arrival of the Spaniards. " As may be gathered from the contemporary 

 chronicles of Las Casas, Oviedo and Herrera, such endemic foci did exist in the 

 Island of Santo Domingo (Hispaniola) and on the coasts of Venezuela (Nueva 

 Andalusia) and Colombia (Castilla de Oro) ever since settlements were made 

 in those places by newly-arrived Spaniards." The data have been so well pre- 

 sented in small compass by Marchoux and Simond that we can do no better 

 than quote them. 



" It has been much discussed whether Christopher Columbus encountered 

 yellow fever on his first or on his second voyage. But whether the 39 men left 

 by the admiral in Santo Domingo fell victims to the disease during the summer 

 or after the battle of Vega-Real, matters little for the history of this disease. 

 It is certain that it existed in an endemic state in the Antilles and along the 

 coasts of the Gulf of Mexico before the discovery of America. It is equally 

 certain that if the Europeans did not bring yellow fever to the New Continent 

 they are the ones who, from Central America, have distributed it over the world. 

 There were amongst them the most numerous victims and the new towns which 

 were founded in the vast territory which today is the Republic of the United 

 States had to suffer attacks. In this country alone, more than 100 epidemics 

 were studied at different points and at different times. 



" From New Orleans the yellow fever spread over the entire lower basin of the 

 Mississippi and Missouri, even reaching Gallipolis [now Pittsburgh] and 

 Cincinnati on the Ohio. One can say that it touched all the towns of the east 

 coast from Florida to the northern frontier, and even to Quebec in Canada. On 

 the west coast it has been seen as far up as San Francisco. New York was 

 attacked for the first time in 1688 and had to suffer some twenty great epi- 

 demics. The yellow fever remained in an endemic condition from 1740 to 1860, 

 and this was the same with Philadelphia, Charleston and New Orleans. All 

 the towns of Louisiana, Mobile, Pensacola, Key West, St. Augustine, Savannah, 

 Baltimore, Norfolk and Boston were thus greatly tried. In fact, according to 

 what is known, it is in the United States that the yellow fever made its most 

 frequent incursions. If one estimates at 100,000 the number of deaths of which 

 it was the cause, one certainly remains well below the truth. 



" In South America it rapidly gained the Guianas and Brazil, and we see it 

 there from 1640. The coast of this vast country, from the Amazons to Rio de 

 Janeiro, constitutes a still persisting endemic center. From there it has made 

 frequent incursions to Santos, and sometimes into the states to the southward, 

 Santa Catharina, Rio Grande, reaching Montevideo and Buenos Ayres, and, 

 going up the rivers of the La Plata to Assumption in Paraguay. On the west 

 coast it has spread from Panama to Peru and even to Chili. 



