126 MOSQUITOES 



yellow fever prevails. All articles of personal apparel are 

 subjected to disinfection and, as everyone knows, during 

 a time when the fever is epidemic in any of our Southern 

 States even the mails are disinfected before being allowed 

 to go North. There was further erected at Camp Lazear 

 a small frame house with a cubic capacity of 2,800 feet, 

 tightly ceiled and battened, provided with small windoAVS, 

 so as to prevent a thorough circulation of air through the 

 house, and with wooden shutters to prevent the disinfect- 

 ing qualities of sunlight. The windows w^ere closed by 

 permanent wire screens with a 5-millimetre mesh. The 

 vestibule was protected by a solid door and a wire screen- 

 door, and the inner entrance by a second wire screen- 

 door. In this way the passage of mosquitoes into the 

 room was effectually excluded. The average temperature 

 was kept at 76.2° F. for a period of sixty-three days, and 

 precaution was taken to maintain sufficient humidity of 

 the atmosphere. On November 30th, three large boxes 

 filled with sheets, pillowslips, blankets, and so on, con- 

 taminated by contact with cases of yellow fever and their 

 discharges, w^ere received and placed in the room. Most 

 of these articles had been taken from the beds of patients 

 sick with yellow fever in Havana. Many of them had 

 been purposely soiled with the excretions of patients. 

 These soiled sheets, pillowcases, and blankets were used 

 in preparing the beds in wdiich the members of the hos- 

 pital corps slept. During sixty -three days this building, 

 thus furnished, was occupied by seven non-immune per- 

 sons. Three of them occupied the room each night for 

 twenty days. Later a fourth box of clothing and bed- 



