256 ENTOMOLOGY 



Following his discovery, Dr. Noguchi, of the Rockefeller Institute 

 for Medical Research, prepared from the organisms a vaccine, which 

 has been administered to many thousand persons with results that are 

 reported to be distinctly encouraging. 



Control of Yellow Fever. The preventive measures based upon the 

 facts learned by the U. S. Army Commission were wonderfully suc- 

 cessful. In February, 1901, Major W. C. Gorgas began a campaign to 

 eradicate the disease in Havana. His efforts were directed against 

 mosquitoes. Every case of fever had to be reported promptly to the 

 authorities. Then the patient was isolated and all the rooms in the 

 building and in neighboring houses fumigated and the doors and 

 windows screened. Standing water in which mosquitoes might develop 

 was drained or . treated with petroleum, and water tanks and barrels 

 were screened. 



In September, 1901, the last case of yellow fever arose in Havana, 

 where the disease had prevailed for 150 years, with an annual mortality 

 of 500 to 1600 or more. Cases are now and then brought into Havana 

 from Mexico or Central America but are treated under screens in the 

 regular hospitals with impunity. 



Yellow Fever in New Orleans. In 1905 the last epidemic of yellow 

 fever occurred in New Orleans. It might have been checked at its 

 inception had not the authorities adopted a policy of secrecy in regard 

 to the presence of the disease. The city was freed from the fever before 

 frost came, by the same methods that had proved successful in Cuba; 

 but not without organized work of the most strenuous kind on the part 

 of the citizens, under the direction of the U. S. Public Health and 

 Marine-Hospital Service. At present the yellow fever mosquito is 

 said to be a rarity in Louisiana owing to the vigorous measures enforced 

 in its suppression throughout the state. 



Fever in the Canal Zone. The Panama Canal zone was formerly 

 one of the most unhealthful places on earth, chiefly on account of the 

 prevalence of malaria and yellow fever. When the United States ac- 

 quired the zone in 1904 it was realized that the first step toward building 

 the great canal was to protect the health of all those immediately con- 

 cerned in the undertaking, and the sanitation of the isthmus was placed 

 in charge of one eminently qualified for the work, Colonel W. C. Gorgas. 



He adapted the methods he had used in Cuba to the conditions 

 existing on the isthmus, with the result that every year the death rate 

 decreased until in 1908 it became, among eight thousand white 

 Americans living there, 9.72 per thousand, "a rate no higher than for a 



