YELLOW FEVER INSTITUTE 



Treasury Department, Bureau of Public Health and Marine-Hoapital Service. 

 WALTEE WTMAN, Surgeon-General. 



Bulletin No. 17. 



THE PROPHYLAXIS OF YELLOW FEVER. 



fey G. k. Guitkras, Surgeon, tl. S. Publie Health and Marine-Hospital Service. 



The study of yellow fever has ever been an interesting one from 

 the time it was first observed in the Western Hemisphere to the 

 present day. 



Whether the disease is indigenous to America or was introduced 

 from the west coast of Africa, is a mooted question. From the his- 

 torical data which we have on the subject it would appear as though 

 the latter opinion was the correct one. 



The disease has been a scourge to the fair and fertile regions of 

 tropical and subtropical America and has greatly retarded their 

 material progress. Its existence in an endemic form at various 

 points, such as Habana, Rio de Janeiro, and Vera Cruz, has given 

 these ports an unenviable reputation with travelers and seriously 

 hampered their commercial interests, and carried from these foci 

 to other infectible territory it has caused widespread epidemics 

 resulting in great loss of life, interference with commerce, and finan- 

 cial disaster. 



The peculiar characteristics of the disease and the mystery which 

 shrouded its etiology and method of propagation have invested it 

 with remarkable interest, and in our day the solution of this mys- 

 tery, in so far as the method of propagation is concerned, has given 

 us one of the most important advances in modern science. 



The work of the United States Army Board in establishing beyond 

 a doubt the hypothesis enunciated by Carlos Finlay, in 1881, as to 

 the transmission of yellow fever by the mosquito, was indeed bril- 

 liant. I had the pleasure of being present at the International Sani- 

 tary Congress held in Habaria when Doctor Reed presented his 



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