6 YELLOW FEVER PROPHYLAXIS IN NEW ORLEANS 



business interests, was harbouring and breeding every year the 

 Stegomyia fas data, and that it had a large foreign and a growing 

 population living under the most insanitary conditions, and amongst 

 whom it was easy to hide disease. Under such circumstances it was 

 fatal to trust to quarantine alone, no matter how well organised, or 

 how free from Yellow Fever New Orleans had remained for many 

 years. 



I now pass to the account of the measures which the people of 

 New Orleans took to stamp out the epidemic ; they constitute, in my 

 opinion, the most brilliant demonstration upon a most extensive scale 

 of the application of modern sanitary teaching to the arrest and 

 prevention of Yellow Fever. The example of co-operation and 

 energy which the people of New Orleans set this year should be 

 followed by every town in the Yellow Fever zone with a feeling of 

 absolute confidence that the loyal carrying out of the same measures 

 will eradicate Yellow Fever wherever it is found. 



Basis of Yellow Fever Prophylaxis. 



The foundation of exact Yellow Fever prophylaxis was laid in 

 June, 1900, by Army Surgeons, Reed, Carroll, Agramonte and Lazear, 

 who were sent to Cuba to study Yellow Fever. In Havana these 

 observers found that already Dr. C. J. Finlay had, as early as 1881, 

 enunciated the theory in no uncertain manner of the propagation of 

 Yellow Fever by the mosquito, and influenced both by this and, as 

 they state, also by the brilliant work of Ross and Italian observers in 

 connection with the propagation of malaria by the mosquito, as well 

 as by certain observations of Carter,* they determined to experi- 

 mentally investigate this line of research. The results obtained by 

 them were most conclusive. In the same year the Liverpool School 

 of Tropical Medicine despatched Drs. Walter Myers and Durham to 

 study the disease at Para ; France followed immediately (late in 

 1 901) with an Expedition composed of Drs. Marchoux, Salimbeni and 

 Simond, which made Rio its headquarters. In 1904 the Hamburg 

 School of Tropical Medicine sent out Drs. Otto and Neumann, who 

 also made Rio their headquarters. In 1903 a Yellow Fever working 

 party composed of Rosenau, Beyer, Parker, Pothier and Francis was 

 sent by the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service to study the 



■Jew Orleans Medical Tournal, 1900, 



