MEDICAL ENTOMOLOGY — HOWAED. 571 



were done in several parts of the United States which were detailed 

 in the book entitled " Mosquitoes, How they Live, How they Carry 

 Disease, and How they May be Destroyed," which was published 

 in 1901. 



It is astonishing how rapidly conviction followed this great dis- 

 covery and how widespread the belief in its soundness soon became. 

 The leaders of the medical profession adopted it at once and doubters 

 were astonishingly few and were soon silenced. Certain State health 

 officers in this country took it up and preached it. As early as 1898 

 I was invited to address the section on medicine of the American 

 Medical Association at its annual convention at Atlantic City on 

 the subject of the malarial mosquito, and no serious objections to 

 the so-called "theory" were in evidence. The only feeble note of 

 protest that I remember was at New Orleans in December, 1905, at 

 a meeting of the section of physiology and experimental medicine 

 of the American Association for the Advancement of Science during 

 a symposium on insect-borne diseases. No one present will ever for- 

 get the dramatic manner in which the late Doctor Chaille crushed 

 the unfortunate speaker. 



As always, the center in this country of early adoption and dissemi- 

 nation of this wonderful discovery was Johns Hopkins University. 



Dr. William S. Thayer went to Italy and studied the work on the 

 Roman Campagna and in the laboratories of Grassi and Celli. He 

 returned to Baltimore and began an enthusiastic campaign of educa- 

 tion. Dr. Walter Reed, of the United States Army; Dr. Jesse W. 

 Lazear, and Dr. J. C. Carroll — all with Johns Hopkins affiliations — 

 absorbed the new ideas with interest, and from this group of men 

 came the next great discovery in medical entomology. 



The war with Spain had just been completed. The American Army 

 of occupation was in Cuba ; the then Surgeon General of the Army, 

 Dr. George M. Sternberg, was a bacteriologist and had been a student 

 of yellow fever. Sanitary conditions in Cuba were very bad. The 

 possibility of an epidemic of yellow fever among the American troops 

 was very great, and malaria was rife on the island. Therefore Gen- 

 eral Sternberg formed a commission, composed of Doctors Reed, Car- 

 roll, and Lazear, and added to their number Dr. Aristides Agra- 

 monte, a Cuban physician educated in the United States, and in- 

 structed them to investigate sanitary conditions in Cuba in as thor- 

 ough a manner as possible, paying special attention to yellow fever. 



Now it happens that as early as 1880 a Cuban physician of a specu- 

 lative turn of mind, a man of imagination (of the A. F. A. King 

 type), named Carlos J. Finlay, had been filled with the idea that yel- 

 low fever is carried by mosquitoes. Not content with theorizing, he 

 put his ideas to the test ; but, working single-handed and in defiance 



