CHAPTER X 



YELLOW FEVER 



DR. BEAUPERTHUY OX TRADITION IN MEDICINE, AND HIS 

 VIEW ON THE MODE OF TRANSMISSION OF YELLOW 

 FEVER — HARRISON AND MOXLY ON THE NATURE 

 OF THE VIRUS OF YELLOW FEVER 



In introducing the subject of malaria I have ah'eady 

 alluded to the opinions of certain men of great 

 distinction in tlie medical world who, long before the 

 scientific proof of the relationship of the mosquito to 

 disease, had come to the conclusion that yellow fever 

 was carried by a mosquito. There was, for instance, 

 Surgeon-General Blair, the great authority on yellow 

 fever, who stated in connection with that disease that 

 ''its shij'tlng lilies of infection and gyratonj movements 

 suggest to the imagination the attributes of insect life "; 

 and then there was the other great naturalist-physician, 

 Dr. Louis Daniel Beauperthuy, who in no uncertain 

 manner pinned his belief on the power of insects to 

 transmit diseases, and even went so far as to accuse 

 the " Zancuclo hobo " (the stegomyia), the domestic 

 mosquito, as being the carrier of yellow fever. He 

 was right, but men did not know it ; and as his writings 



100 



