Man and Microbe.^. 103 



Quoting from Macfie: "The Turk and mosquito together 

 have destroyed Greece, and perhaps the mosquito has been the 

 most destructive. Little did the Greeks know that the blood of 

 the slaves they imported swarmed with microbes that would 

 devour there mighty civilization. Yet so it seems it was. Ne- 

 mesis is a gnat." 



Although the offending microbe of yellow fever has not been 

 determined, yellow fever has been practically stamped out. 

 Especially after the meritorious labors of Ross, it was sus- 

 pected that some species of mosquito was responsible for the 

 transmission of malaria. Search for the insect was initiated 

 by Sternberg. Reid, Carroll, Lazear, and others of the Ameri- 

 can Army Medical Service in Cuba during the summer of 1900. 

 Eleven men volunteered for the experiment. They permitted 

 mosquitos which had previously fed on yellow-fever patients to 

 bite them. Doctors Carroll and Lazear contracted the disease, 

 and the latter died. Thus was the Stegomyia "caught with the 

 goods." 



After having demonstrated that this mosquito was respon- 

 sible, Doctor Reid and associates began experiments to ascer- 

 tain whether the disease could be propagated, as was the cur- 

 rent belief, by clothing, bedding and other articles, from yellow- 

 fever patients. Into a specially erected, nonventilated, dark 

 building, contaminated clothes from the beds of yellow-fever 

 patients were dumped. This bed clothing was saturated with 

 the vomitus and excreta of the patients. Assuredly it required 

 the great courage of brave and unselfish men to enter this 

 odious, fetid, foul house of the dead. Yet that is exactly what 

 the volunteers did, and they remained there several days under 

 these most loathsome conditions. None contracted the disease, 

 however, thus heroically demonstrating that yellow fever is 

 not contagious by association, but depends solely upon the mos- 

 quito Stef/omyia for its transmission. 



The inhabitation of the luxurious tropics is now a matter of 

 the eradication of this mosquito. 



XVII. MICROBES AND NATIONS. 



Already have we learned that microbes — these silent, invis- 

 ible instruments of death — have played a great role in the 

 affairs of man. Without doubt the haemamoeba of malaria and 

 the tubercle bacillus have been two great factors in the rise and 

 fall of nations. Microbes not only have destroyed nations, but 



