Insects and Disease 



As long as the United States held control at 

 Havana the yellow fever was kept in check by 

 fighting the mosquitoes, when this vigilance was 

 relaxed the fever began to appear again and the 

 Cubans found that it was necessary to keep up the 

 fight against the mosquitoes if the island was to be 

 kept free from the disease. 



THE FIGHT IN NEW ORLEANS 



In the summer of 1905 came another oppor- 

 tunity to put the knowledge gained during these 

 experiments to a practical test. Samuel Hopkins 

 Adams in his article in McClure's Magazine, 

 June, 1906, says of the beginning of this fight: 



"Eight years before, the mosquito-plague had in- 

 fected the great, busy, joyous metropolis of the south. 

 Ignorant of the real processes of the infection, New 

 Orleans had fought it blindly, frantically, in an agony 

 of panic, and when at last the frost put an end to the 

 helpless city's plight, she lay spent and prostrate. The 

 yellow fever of 1905 came with a more formidable and 

 unexpected suddenness than that of 1897. It sprang 

 into life like a secret and armed uprising in the midst 

 of the city, full-fledged and terrible. But there arose 

 against it the trained fighting line of scientific knowl- 

 edge. Accepting, with a fine courage of faith that 

 most important preventive discovery since vaccination, 



