SURGEON-MAJOR GORGAS 



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the last February of Spanish rule (1898), was 82.32 

 per thousand, and in February, 1901, was 19.32. 

 Still, there is an example here, in the 1901 work 

 in Havana, for the world to follow, wherever yellow 

 fever exists. The following abstract of Surgeon- 

 Major Gorgas' results has lately been published in 

 the Practitioner, May 1902, by Professor Hewlett, 

 one of the foremost of English bacteriologists : — 



"Commencing in February 1901, orders were 

 issued that every suspected case of yellow fever 

 should be screened with wire gauze at the public 

 expense, so as to render the room or rooms 

 mosquito-proof. All mosquitoes in the infected 

 house and in contagious houses were destroyed. 

 After the middle of February, 100 men were 

 employed in carrying out the destruction of the 

 mosquito-larvae in their breeding places, putting 

 oil in the cesspools of all houses, clearing the 

 streams, draining pools, and oiling the larger 

 bodies of water. Up to June, quarantine was 

 enforced, together with disinfection of the house 

 and fomites. After that, however, rigid quarantine 

 of the patient was stopped, and disinfection of 

 fabrics and clothing ceased. It was merely 

 required that the patient should be reported, his 

 house placarded and screened, and a guard placed 

 over each case to report how general sick-room 

 sanitation was carried out, to see that the screen- 

 door communicating with the screened part of the 

 house was kept properly closed, and to see that 

 communication with the sick-room was not too 

 free, four or five non-immunes only being allowed 

 in. By the end of September, the last focus of the 

 disease had been got rid of, and since then, zip to the 



