CHAPTER IX 



THE YELLOW-FEVER MOSQUITO {Stegomyia calopua) 



. . . et nova febrium 

 Terris incubuit cohors. 



(Horace.) 



Like other branches of human activity disease 

 has its romantic and its unromantic side. No- 

 body can regard mumps or measles as romantic. 

 On the other hand, yellow fever calls up all 

 the romance of slave-trading, pirates and the 

 Spanish Main, buccaneers, maroonings and 

 other grisly horrors, whose sole redeeming 

 feature was a touch of romance. Lovers of 

 pirate stories — and who are not ? — will always 

 remember their graphic description of Yellow 

 Jack in the West Indies. 



We have probably always had disease with 

 us since the creation of the world — that act 

 of ' impardonnable imprudence,^ as Anatole 

 France calls it ; but the first description of 

 yellow fever only dates back to 1647, when 

 an outbreak occurred in the Barbados. Then, 

 as now, it devastated the shipping of the port, 



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