294. MOSQUITOES OF NORTH AMERICA 
tation on every hand growing unprotected and severe cold is unknown. Yet the 
nights are cold, even in summer, and it is to this condition, the low minimum 
nightly temperatures, that the freedom from Aédes calopus, and consequently 
from yellow-fever epidemics, is due. 
ORIGINAL HOME OF AEDES CALOPUS. 
The original habitat of this mosquito must clearly be identical with that of 
yellow fever, for it is inconceivable that this parasite would have developed in 
any other region than the original home of its obligatory host. Early history 
points very strongly to the West Indies and adjacent main-land as that home. 
Finlay, in a paper read February 19, 1902, before the Pan-American Sanitary 
Congress, gave good evidence that yellow fever was endemic in America before 
the arrival of the Spaniards. “As may be gathered from the contemporary 
chronicles of Las Casas, Oviedo and Herrera, such endemic foci did exist in the 
Island of Santo Domingo (Hispaniola) and on the coasts of Venezuela (Nueva 
Andalusia) and Colombia (Castilla de Oro) ever since settlements were made 
in those places by newly-arrived Spaniards.” The data have been so well pre- 
sented in small compass by Marchoux and Simond that we can do no better 
than quote them. 
“Tt has been much discussed whether Christopher Columbus encountered 
yellow fever on his first or on his second voyage. But whether the 39 men left 
by the admiral in Santo Domingo fell victims to the disease during the summer 
or after the battle of Vega-Real, matters little for the history of this disease. 
It is certain that it existed in an endemic state in the Antilles and along the 
coasts of the Gulf of Mexico before the discovery of America. It is equally 
certain that if the Europeans did not bring yellow fever to the New Continent 
they are the ones who, from Central America, have distributed it over the world. 
There were amongst them the most numerous victims and the new towns which 
were founded in the vast territory which today is the Republic of the United 
States had to suffer attacks. In this country alone, more than 100 epidemics 
were studied at different points and at different times. 
“ From New Orleans the yellow fever spread over the entire lower basin of the 
Mississippi and Missouri, even reaching Gallipolis [now Pittsburgh] and 
Cincinnati on the Ohio. One can say that it touched all the towns of the east 
coast from Florida to the northern frontier, and even to Quebec in Canada. On 
the west coast it has been seen as far up as San Francisco. New York was 
attacked for the first time in 1688 and had to suffer some twenty great epi- 
demics. The yellow fever remained in an endemic condition from 1740 to 1860, 
and this was the same with Philadelphia, Charleston and New Orleans. All 
the towns of Louisiana, Mobile, Pensacola, Key West, St. Augustine, Savannah, 
Baltimore, Norfolk and Boston were thus greatly tried. In fact, according to 
what is known, it is in the United States that the yellow fever made its most 
frequent incursions. If one estimates at 100,000 the number of deaths of which 
it wag the cause, one certainly remains well below the truth. 
“Jn South America it rapidly gained the Guianas and Brazil, and we see it 
there from 1640. The coast of this vast country, from the Amazons to Rio de 
Janeiro, constitutes a still persisting endemic center. From there it has made 
frequent incursions to Santos, and sometimes into the states to the southward, 
Santa Catharina, Rio Grande, reaching Montevideo and Buenos Ayres, and, 
going up the rivers of the La Plata to Assumption in Paraguay. On the west 
coast it has spread from Panama to Peru and even to Chili. 
