DISEASE RELATION SUSPECTED 187 
In 1848 Dr. J. C. Nott published a paper on the origin of yellow fever in the 
New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, in which he expressed his belief in 
the insect transmission of yellow fever and malaria. He called attention to the 
fact that yellow fever occurs under conditions and in places favoring the de- 
velopment of insects, and he thought it was spread from one locality to another 
by them. He thought it likely that the disease itself is produced by micro- 
organisms. 
Recently Dr. A. Agramonte, in an article in the Cronica Médico-Quirtrgica 
de la Habana, and quoted by the British Medical Journal, calls attention to the 
pioneer suggestions of Louis Daniel Beauperthuy, born in Guadeloupe in 1808. 
Writing in the Gaceta Official de Cumand (Venezuela), in May, 1853, Beau- 
perthuy says that yellow fever is due to the same cause as that producing inter- 
mittent fever, and that it is by no means to be regarded as a contagious dis- 
ease. It develops under conditions favoring the development of mosquitoes. 
The mosquito introduces into the circulation of a person bitten a poison which 
softens the red blood corpuscles, causes their rupture, and facilitates the mixing 
of the coloring matter with the serum. There are many mosquitoes but not all 
are equally dangerous ; most so are those with legs striped with white and partly a 
household kind. He further states that remittent, intermittent and pernicious 
fevers, like yellow fever, have as their cause an animal or vegeto-animal virus 
which is inoculated into the human body. He supposed that this poison was 
sucked up by the mosquitoes from decomposing substances, exposed at low tide, 
on the seashore and in the mangrove swamps and pointed out that yellow fever 
invariably breaks out in such places. These fevers are grave in proportion to 
the abundance of mosquitoes. It is not the air from marshes, nor stagnant 
water, that makes such regions unhealthy, but the presence of mosquitoes. 
Beauperthuy wrote most fully to the journal above mentioned, but he made 
more than one communication to the Academie des Sciences, of Paris. We have 
seen one of his communications, dated January 18, 1856, entitled: “ Researches 
into the cause of Asiatic cholera, into that of yellow fever and of marsh fever,” 
in which he states that as early as 1839 his investigations in unhealthy localities 
in South America convinced him that the intermittent or so-called marsh fevers 
are due to a vegeto-animal virus inoculated into man by mosquitoes. His idea, 
however, was that this virus was extracted by the mosquitoes from decomposing 
substances. 
' Dr. Oswaldo Cruz, director of the Public Health Service of Brazil, in a recent 
paper (Public Health Reports, U. S. P. H. and M. H. Service, Nov. 19, 1909) 
calls attention to the fact that in Brazil, before the American experiments, Dr. 
Utingguassti and afterwards Dr. Stapler, of Sao Paulo, also made references to 
the transmission of yellow fever by mosquitoes. It is probable that there were 
other physicians in advance of their times who, like Nott and Beauperthuy, held 
similar ideas, but if they expressed them, or if they wrote about them, their words 
have not been preserved. 
Many curious ideas about the possible relation between mosquitoes and disease 
have been published. For example, in a paper entitled “ Curious Facts Concern- 
