242 MOSQUITOES OF NORTH AMERICA 
yellow-fever patients in the city of Havana. Their work, however, was not 
carried to a satisfactory end and they stated that they had found no conclusive 
evidence that this bacillus was responsible for yellow fever. About the same 
time Archinard and Woodson, at New Orleans, obtained results which they con- 
sidered confirmatory of Sanarelli’s claim. Afterwards it was shown by Reed 
and Carroll that the organism in question was identical with the bacillus of hog 
cholera and in no way concerned with yellow fever. 
FINLAY’S WORK. 
In 1881 Dr. Carlos Finlay, of Havana, proposed the theory that yellow fever, 
whatever its cause may be, is conveyed by means of a certain mosquito (Culex 
mosquito = Aédes calopus) from man to man, and not in the manner of ordi- 
nary contagious or infectious diseases. His paper, published in the “ Anales de 
la Real Academia de Ciencias médicas, fisicas y naturales de la Habana,” shows 
that he had carefully studied the habits of house mosquitoes and had determined 
all the factors in the life-history of Aédes calopus which have since been shown 
to be essential in its réle of transmitter of the disease. It was this careful study 
of the mosquito and the disease, conducted through many years in the most 
favorable locality, in the city of Havana, that gave him a firm conviction that the 
two were interdependent. On this account his theory has true scientific merit, 
it was based on intensive study, and not, as had been the case with his prede- 
cessors, on vague suspicions or flights of the imagination. 
Subsequently Finlay published a number of important papers, in which his 
views were modified from time to time. He thought out carefully the question 
of immunization and concluded that this was brought about by mild infection, 
through the bite of single mosquitoes. In one of his papers he published experi- 
ments with 100 individuals, producing 3 cases of mild fever. None of the cases, 
however, was under his full control, and as the possibility of other methods of 
contracting the disease was not excluded his claims were not accepted. There- 
fore, his theory, while it was received with interest, was not considered to be 
proved. 
DR. A. C, SMITH’S EXPERIMENT. 
An interesting experiment, generally overlooked, was tried, based on the ideas 
of Finlay of the mosquito dissemination of yellow fever, in the summer of 1897 
and prior to the exact work of the United States Army Board in Havana, shown 
in the following paragraph, by Past Surgeon A. C. Smith, of the then U. 8. 
Marine-Hospital Service (now the U. 8S. Public Health and Marine-Hospital 
Service). Doctor Smith screened all the windows and doors of the National 
Quarantine Station on Ship Island, Gulf of Mexico, and no case of yellow fever 
developed at the station, although he treated some thirty cases of the disease 
brought there by infected vessels. We take this statement from a paper by Dr. 
P. H. Bailhache, Surgeon U. 8. Public Health and Marine-Hospital Service, 
read before the first anti-mosquito convention in New York, in 1903. 
