374 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIII. No. 584. 



migrates has been indicated many times by 

 the frequency with which houses so close 

 to the infected dwelling as to be almost 

 contiguous, have escaped infection. It is 

 further illustrated along the same lines as 

 those I have already mentioned in regard 

 to railroad cars, by the fact that in each 

 case in which we have been able to trace 

 the manner of infection in a city or town, 

 it has been found that the locality was 

 infected by some person who, arriving 

 there during the incubative period of the 

 disease, subsequently developed the fever. 

 In no instance has there been any legiti- 

 mate evidence which would point to any 

 other method of infection. 



I believe the idea prevailing among some 

 people with regard to the traveling of the 

 infected mosquito, to be a bugaboo, though 

 I do not desire to be understood as saying 

 that the stegomyia never does travel. It 

 unquestionably does, but only because in 

 the incipiency of its life it has taken up its 

 habitat in a car instead of a house, or be- 

 cause accidentally imprisoned in a box or a 

 drawer, it is carried, nole7is volens, but 

 rare, indeed, are such cases. 



I have been quoted by Dr. Rosenau, in 

 his work on disinfection and disinfectants, 

 as saying that 'disease more often crosses 

 the street in a pair of shoes than in any 

 other way. ' It was to yellow fever that I 

 aUuded in our conversation about this in 

 1898. 



12. So confident were we of the absolute 

 truth of the mosquito law, that right from 

 the beginning we brought yellow fever pa- 

 tients from points outside of the city, and 

 placed them in the hospital here, believing 

 that in so doing we ran no risk of increas- 

 ing the infection. We allowed people from 

 infected points in the state, such as Pat- 

 terson and Tallulah, and from the infected 

 localities of Mississippi, to come into this 

 city with no other precaution than that 

 they should be provided with a certificate 



that they were not from an actually in- 

 fected house and were in good health when 

 they started. We had no trouble what- 

 ever on this score, and to the credit of 

 American manhood and womanhood be it 

 said, the addresses given by these people 

 as their intended residences in the city 

 were absolutely and invariably correct, and 

 all of them were inspected, without diffi- 

 culty, during the first six days of their 

 sojourn here. The only trouble we had 

 from incoming persons was occasioned by 

 those who sneaked in from contiguous 

 localities, and consequently evaded the 

 daily inspection, as they had already ig- 

 nored the requirement that none who came 

 from an actually infected house should be 

 admitted. 



13. Yello'W' fever is so easy of control, if 

 only the medical profession and the people 

 will be frank and honest with the health 

 officers, that it seems a crime against hu- 

 manity that we must needs quarantine such 

 a disease. There is no more rationalism in 

 quarantining yellow fever than there would 

 be in quarantining typhoid. Indeed, there 

 is less, because it may be stated as an abso- 

 lute and invariable law, that a case of 

 yellow fever known in the first two or three 

 days of its existence, and to which proper 

 measures can be applied, presents abso- 

 lutely no menace to the community, nor 

 even to the family resident in the house 

 with it. Until, however, such laws are 

 enacted and enforced as will make the con- 

 cealment of a ease of yellow fever, either 

 through the complaisance of the family 

 physician or the cowardice of the family, 

 a crime and an absolute impossibility, there 

 will continue to be more or less of quar- 

 antine—probably more. Such laws are 

 deemed by many people an interference 

 with individual liberty and incompatible 

 with the rights of American citizenship, 

 and similar buncombe, ad libitum. The 

 only other alternative, and a most excellent 



