276 



YELLOW FEVER 



The earlier attempts to reproduce the disease, 

 by inoculation with its products, failed altogether : — 



"In 1816, Dr Chervin, of Point-a-Pitre 

 (Antilles), drank repeatedly large quantities of 

 black vomit without feeling the least disturbance. 

 Some years before, other North American col- 

 leagues, Doctors Potter, Firth, Catteral, and 

 Parker, did everything possible to inoculate them- 

 selves with yellow fever. After having uselessly 

 attempted experiments on animals, they experi- 

 mented on themselves, inoculating the black matter 

 at the very moment in which the moribund patient 

 rejected it, placing this matter in their eyes, or in 

 wounds made in their arms, injecting it more than 

 twenty times in various parts of their body ... in 

 short, devising every sort of daring means for 

 experimentally transmitting yellow fever. All 

 these experiments were without result, and in the 

 United States during many years it was believed 

 that this terrible malady was non-contagious." 

 (Sanarelli, quoted in British Medical Journal, 3rd 

 July 1897.) 



The history of the subject, from 18 12 to 1880, 

 is given by Dr Finlay of Havana, in the New York 

 Medical Record (9th February 1901). In 1880, 

 two very important reports on the disease were 

 published ; one by a Havana Commission of the 

 National Board of Health of the United States, 

 the other by the United States Navy Department. 

 They tended to show that yellow fever is a "germ- 

 disease " ; that it is not wind-borne ; and that there 

 may be some change, outside the body of the 

 patient, whereby the virulence of the active principle 



