FIGHTING THE INSECTS 



Apparently no one had studied the development of the com- 

 monest of the rainwater mosquitoes since Reaumur had written 

 in Paris one hundred and fifty years before, and of course I 

 found that in Washington things were rather different. 



So I was getting more and more interested in mosquitoes, 

 and later worked out the life histories of several species. Among 

 these was Anopheles quadrimaculatus , afterwards shown to be 

 a malaria-carrier. Then came the announcement of Ross's dis- 

 covery. I was now ready to publish a bulletin on this subject, 

 but before I did it I sent an illustrated article on the life history 

 of a malarial mosquito to the Scientific American. It was pub- 

 lished and attracted much attention. 



Almost coincident with Ross's discovery, the Italian school 

 of observers, led by Battista Grassi, had made similar announce- 

 ments. Dr. W. S. Thayer, of Johns Hopkins University, who had 

 been specializing on malaria, went to Rome to study the matter, 

 and on his return came over to Washington to talk with me 

 about malarial mosquitoes. He became interested in a campaign 

 of instruction on these new discoveries, in the State of Maryland, 

 and I remember lecturing with him at a Maryland town under 

 the auspices of the State Board of Health. I had already lectured 

 before the American Medical Association, before a Medical As- 

 sociation in Texas, and before other audiences in different parts 

 of the country on this general subject. 



It resulted from all this that when Dr. Walter Reed, of the 

 U. S. Army, wanted to start a thorough investigation of 

 Yellow Fever in Cuba at the end of the Spanish-American War, 

 he came to my ofBce to make a study of certain mosquitoes 

 prevalent in Cuba, and especially of the one then known as 

 Culex fasciatus, which had been suggested by a Havana physi- 

 cian, Carlos Finley (son of a Spanish mother and an English 

 father), as the probable carrier of Yellow Fever. He brought 



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