'33 



building/ were no articles which had not been carefully disin- 

 fected. The house contained two rooms, and nonimmunes were 

 placed in both rooms. In one room, separated from the other by 

 wire screen partitions only, mosquitoes which had bitten yellow 

 fever patients were introduced. In the other room they were 

 excluded. In the latter room the men remained in perfect health ; 

 in the mosquito room 50 per cent, of the persons bitten by in- 

 fected mosquitoes (that had been kept twelve days or more after 

 biting yellow fever patients) were taken with the disease, and the 

 yellow fever diagnosis was confirmed by resident physicians in 

 Havana, who were, above all others, familiar with the disease in 

 every form. Persons bitten by mosquitoes which had bitten a 

 yellow fever patient within less than twelve days did not con- 

 tract the disease. In another series of experiments, seven per- 

 sons were bitten by infected mosquitoes by placing the hand in 

 a jar containing the insects, and five of them, or 71 per cent., con- 

 tracted the disease." 



It is upon the basis of this work, by destroying the insect car- 

 rier, that Dr. Gorgas cleaned up Havana and the Panama strip, 

 rendering 1 the building of the canal a practicable job. 



Sporadic attempts to eliminate mosquitoes were made at vari- 

 ous places in the northeastern part of New Jersey as early as 

 1900, but in almost every case the freedom which this first work 

 produced was wiped out by a sudden appearance of a tremendous 

 horde of mosquitoes, leaving the citizens of the supposedly pro- 

 tected places disgusted with the whole effort and the public- 

 spirited promoters of the work in deep disgrace. 



Experience of this sort taught Dr. John B. Smith and others 

 that there were phases in the natural history of the New Jersey 

 species that were not known and that successful mosquito con- 

 trol could not be had without a further investigation of the New 

 Jersey mosquitoes. 



Dr. Smith and his friends then approached the Legislature 

 with the proposition that the mosquito problem was of sufficient 

 importance to* the people of New Jersey to> justify an appropria- 

 tion to investigate the possibilities of bringing the pest under 

 control. The Legislature enacted a law in 1902 authorizing such 



