126 



Insects and Disease 



jokingly that if there was anything in the mosquito 

 theory, I should have a good dose. And so it happened. 

 After having slight premonitory symptoms for two 

 days, I was taken sick on August 31, and on Septem- 

 ber 1, I was carried to the yellow fever camp. My life 

 was in the balance for three days, and my chart shows 

 that on the fifth, sixth and seventh days my urine con- 

 tained eighth-tenths and nine-tenths of moist albumin. 

 On the day I was taken sick, August 31, 1900, Dr. La- 

 zear applied the same mosquito, with three others, to 

 another individual who suffered a comparatively mild 

 attack and was well before I had left my bed. It so 

 happened that I was the first person in whom the mos- 

 quito was proved to convey the disease. 



"On the eighteenth of September, five days after I 

 was permitted to leave my bed, Dr. Lazear was stricken, 

 and died in convulsions just one week later, after sev- 

 eral days of delirium with black vomit. Such is yellow 

 fever. 



"He was bitten by a stray mosquito while applying 

 the other insects to a patient in one of the city hospitals. 

 He did not recognize it as a Stegomyia, and thought 

 it was a Culex. It was permitted to take its fill and he 

 attached no importance to the bite until after he was 

 taken sick, when he related the incident to me. I 

 shall never forget the expression of alarm in his eyes 

 when I last saw him alive in the third or fourth day 

 of his illness. The spasmodic contractions of his dia- 

 phragm indicated that black vomit was impending, and 



