MEDICINE, RECENT ADVANCES IN. 



should be careful to avoid all mosquito bites, and pressed his belief in the mosquito theory of ma- 

 especially those of the species Anopheles (page laria. The credit for the explicit statement of the 

 345) These may be distinguished from the other theory of the propagation ot yellow fever by mos- 

 common species, Culex, by the difference in their quitoes belongs to Dr Carlos J. Fmlay, of Ha- 

 palpi, as is shown on this page. In Culex these yana. He announced his theory in a paper read 

 are short and club-like; in Anopheles they are al- before the Royal Academy of that city on Aug. 

 most as long as the proboscis, and slender. The 14,1881. Dr 1 inlay s theory was not generally 

 male mosquito does not bite human beings. accepted at that time and he seems not to have 



been in a position to test it adequately, although 

 he has continued to work on the problem up to 

 the present time. That the mosquito is capable 

 of causing yellow fever has now been proved be- 

 yond a doubt by the experimental work of the 

 commission that the United States Government 

 sent to Cuba to study the disease in June, 1900. 

 During the interval between Dr. Finlay's an- 

 nouncement of his theory and the final proof of 

 the mosquito's guilt by Dr. Reed's work, the at- 

 tention of investigators appears to have been 

 directed chiefly to finding the actual yellow-fever 

 germ itself. Sternberg and Sanarelli thought 

 they had isolated the true yellow-fever germ in 

 the' so-called Bacillus icteroides. But the later re- 

 searches of Dr. Reed and his colleagues have failed 

 to confirm this, and at present, although there is 

 no question that a certain species of mosquito, 

 Stegomyla fasciata (formerly Culex fasciatus), 

 can carry the infection of yellow fever from per- 

 son to person, what this infection consists of has 

 not been satisfactorily determined. The recent 

 work of the Yellow Fever Commission in Cuba, 

 while not so complete as that which led to the 



CULEX T^ENIORHYNCHUS (FEMALE) SHOWING THE SHORT solution of the malaria problem, is of great 

 PALPI THAT DISTINGUISH CULEX FROM ANOPHELES. economic as well as scientific importance. Dr. 



Horlbeck, of the American Public Health Associa- 



In New York city and the surrounding districts, tion, estimated that the epidemic of yellow fever 

 Dr. William N. Berkeley says, the Anopheles may of 1897 in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama* 

 be readily distinguished by its spotted wings. The which cost nearly 16,000 lives, involved a total 

 avoidance of Anopheles bites may 'be secured by loss to the country of not less than $100,000,000. 

 keeping indoors at night, as this species appears As no yellow-fever germ has yet been isolated, 

 to be largely nocturnal in its feeding habits, it is not possible to construct a complete cycle, 



This, of course, implies that the house occupied 

 has been made thoroughly mosquito-proof. 



as was done in the case of malaria; but by actual 

 experimental infection with infected mosquitoes- 



One of the results of the new theory promises of some brave volunteers from the United States 

 to be the careful isolation from mosquitoes of ma- army, who gave themselves freely for the danger- 

 larial sufferers, as each mosquito biting a man ous work, the guilt of the mosquito has been 

 with ^malaria immediately becomes a new source positively proved. Camp Lazear, where the com- 

 mission's experiments were carried on, was about 

 a mile from Quemados, Cuba. Three sets of tests 

 were carried out. First, the attempt was made 



for the spread of the disease. 



The mosquito, while not so prolific as the ma- 

 laria parasite, is still rather a rapid breeder. Prof. 

 L. O. Howard calculated that the 19,110 larvae 



to infect non-immune individuals by exposure to- 



that he found in a rain barrel would, by the end intimate contact with infected clothing and bed- 

 of the summer, have produced a num- 

 ber of mosquitoes expressed by not 

 less than 25 figures. 



The economic importance of the 

 final solution of the malaria problem 

 will be appreciated when it is remem- 

 bered that 5,000,000 persons die every 

 year in India of fevers, a large num- 

 ber of which are malarial in origin, 

 and that in certain portions of Africa 

 and India the country is practically 

 uninhabitable because of this dis- 

 ease. 



Mosquitoes and Yellow Fever. 

 According to Dr. Walter Reed, of 

 the United States army, director of 

 the recent Yellow Fever Commission 

 in Cuba, the theory that some insect, 

 and not a diffusible miasm, as was THE MOSQUITO THAT TRANSMITS YELLOW FEVER (STEGOMYIA FASCIATA). 

 generally believed until recent years, 1, male ; 2, female. 



is the active agent in the spread of 



y f 1 lA f M Ver ' ) vas first advaneed b y Dr. J. C. Nott, ding, by what are technically known as fomites; 

 of Mobile, Ala., in March, 1848. His views are second, by the direct injection of blood from cases- 

 given in full m the New Orleans Medical Journal of yellow fever; and third, by the bites of mos- 

 for that year. In the same article Dr. Nott ex- quitoes that had been pastured on yellow-fever 



