Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1904, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
Terms, $4 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. I 
Six Months, $3. J 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, AUGUST 2 6, 1906. 
( VOL. LXV.— No. 9. 
k '\T.-k QAR T3t>/-\ A T^f*T A V Vn'Rir. 
^The Forest and Stream is the recognized medium of entertain- 
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correspondents. 
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particulars respecting subscriptions, see prospectus on page iii. 
The object of this journal will be to studiously 
promote a healthful interest in outdoor recre= 
ation, and to cultivate a refined taste for natural 
objects. 
Announcement in first number of 
Forest and Stream, Aug. 14, 1873. 
THE FEVER AND A MOSQUITO. 
When the presence of yellow fever was reported in 
' New Orleans this year, the announcement was received by 
' the citizens of that city and by the public at large with a 
' calmness which was in marked contrast with the panic 
■ which in The past has always attended the coming of the 
fever. This was because the terrifying mystery of the 
disease has been taken from it, and methods of coping 
’ with it have been discovered. This triumph over yellow 
fever was the greatest, farthest reaching and most bene- 
' ficent achievement of the American army of intervention 
in Cuba. The story is worth recalling. 
The fever had prevailed on the island for 130 years. 
' It was carried to Havana in the year 1762 by a band of 
convicts who were brought from, Vera Cruz to work on 
, the fortifications at Havana. Thus obtaining a foothold 
the disease became a permanent scourge, from which the 
island was never free: Every month in every year had 
its yellow fever cases. When the United States inter- 
vened in Cuba, it was recognized that one task to be un- 
dertaken was the cleaning of Havana, to remove forever 
the pest-breeding conditions existing there. When the 
Americans entered the city they found it filthy beyond 
description. Under the direction of General Ludlow was 
undertaken the tremendous task of sanitary reform. In 
a few months the streets had been made as clean as those 
of any modern city — cleaner than those pf most cities of 
the United States, as they are to-day — and an adequate 
system had been put into operation for the removal of 
garbage. If the yellow fever had been altogether a filth 
' disease, these efficient sanitary measures must have been 
I efficacious to reduce the number of victims; and indeed 
I the fever conditions during the first half of 1899, which 
was the first year of the American occupation, appeared 
to demonstrate the good results of the sanitary reform. 
In January there was only one death from fever, in Feb- 
ruary none, in March one, in April two, in May one, in 
June one and in July two, a total of only seven deaths 
in the first seven months. This was accepted by the au- 
thorities as a demonstration that the cleansing of the 
town had eradicated the disease. 
There were other conditions which were exceedingly 
favorable in the fight against the fever. The preceding 
five years had been years of war, and for the last few 
months the blockade by American warships had prac- 
tically put an end to immigration ; the non-immune popu- 
lation, that is, of residents who had never had the fever, 
had been pretty well exhausted; there was no longer very 
much material left for the disease. 
But in August of this year, 1899, conditions were 
changed; and with the change came a recurrence of the 
scourge which brought consternation, to the authorities 
and showed them that their fancied security in municipal 
cleanliness was without secure foundation. Large num- 
bers of Spanish immigrants arrived at Havana, 12,000 
coming in between August and December. This meant a 
new supply of non-immune material, and at once the fever 
broke out. By December there had developed a severe 
epidemic which continued, into 1900, and despite the fact 
that the city was as clean and in as good sanitary condi- 
tion as the skill of the authorities could make 'it, there 
were not less than 1,400 yellow fever cases. 
The authorities were perplexed and baffled. Their 
theory had been that yellow fever was a filth disease. 
Tjiey bad got rid of the filth, but the disease persisted, 
and week after week and month after month found a 
growing host of victims. The army of the United States 
had been defeated in the campaign against a mysterious 
foe, but the victory was yet to be achieved, and achieved 
by the army. 
In the summer of 1900 Surgeon-General Sternberg en- 
trusted to a board named by him the task of studying the 
infectious diseases prevailing in Cuba. The board con- 
sisted of Major Walter Reed, Surgeon in the United 
States Anny, and Contract Surgeons James Carroll, Aris- 
tides Agramonte and Jesse W. Lazear, of the United 
States Army. Arriving in Quemodo in June, the board 
first devoted its attention to a series of bacteriological 
investigations, to discover, if possible, the specific bacteria 
which caused yellow fever, but the investigation was 
without result. 
Experiments were then undertaken based on a theory 
which had been suggested twenty years before by Dr. 
Carlos Finlay, a Cuban, of Havana, which was that the 
yellow fever was conveyed by means of a mosquito, the 
species probably being Culex fasciaitus, or as afterward 
named and now known, Stegomyia fasciatus. Of eleven 
persons under observation at this time who were bitten 
by contaminated mosquitoes, ten were unaffected and two 
contracted the fever, one of them being Dr. Lazear, of 
tbe commission, whose death followed. The circum- 
stances attending these cases were such as to .leave no 
doubt in the minds of the observers that the disease had 
been conveyed by the insects, and in a preliminary note 
read before the American Public Health Association at 
Indianapolis in October, 1900, the commission announced 
that the mosquito was the agent. 
In November of that year an experiment station, named 
in honor of their dead comrade. Camp Lazear, was estab- 
lished by the commission one mile from Quemodo, and 
two experiment houses were constructed, each carefully 
screened beyond the possibility of the entrance of mos- 
quitoes. Volunteers were then called for to submit them- 
selves to experiment. These voluntary patients were 
found among hospital attendants, American soldiers and 
Spanish immigrants, all of them being non-immune sub- 
jects. The volunteers stationed in one of the screened 
houses, termed the infected mosquito building, were sub- 
riected to the bites of mosquitoes which had been infected 
by having bitten yellow fever patients. The volunteers in 
the other house, designated the infected clothing building, 
were carefully screened from all mosquitoes, but slept 
in contact with soiled clothing, bedding and other articles 
brought direct from the yellow fever hospitals. The first 
volunteer who was bitten by an infected mosquito and 
thus contracted the disease was John R. Kissinger, a sol- 
dier, of whose heroic conduct we should not fail to recall 
the tribute paid by Dr. Reed. “I cannot let this oppor- 
tunity pass,” Dr. Reed wrote, “without expressing my 
admiration of this young Ohio soldier, who volunteered 
for this- experiment, as he expressed it, 'solely in the in- 
terest of humanity and the cause of science,’ and with 
the only proviso that he should receive no pecuniary re- 
ward. In my opinion, this exhibition of moral courage 
has never been surpassed in the annals of the army of the 
United States.” 
Of the thirteen non-immunes in the infected mosquito 
building, who were bitten by mosquitoes which had bitten 
a yellow fever patient at least twelve days previously, ten 
contracted the disease. Happily, none of the cases termi- 
nated fatally. Of the volunteers who slept in the infected 
clothing building, although they spent twenty nights there 
in close contact with the bedding, clothing and filthiest 
articles that had been used and soiled by patients in the 
fever hospitals suffering with the disease in its most viru- 
lent type, not a single one contracted the fever. The 
experiments were conducted throughout with a thorough- 
ness and care and in a scientific spirit which precluded 
the possibility of error, and insured the confidence of the 
scientific world in the results achieved. The tests were 
accepted as proving beyond question the truth of the 
Finlay theory that the disease was transmitted by a mos- 
quito. Briefly summed up, the conclusions of the board 
were as follows: 
“i. The specific agent in the causation of yellow fever 
exists in the blood of a patient for the first three days 
of his attack, after which time he cease§ t9 be a menace 
to the health of other?, 
“2. A mosquito of a sinffle species, Stegomyia fasciatus. 
ingesting the blood of a patient during this infective 
period is powerless to- convey the disease to another per- 
son by its bite until about twelve days have elapsed, but 
can do so thereafter for an indefinite period, probably 
during the remainder of its life. 
“3. The disease cannot in nature be spread in any other 
way than by the bite of the previously infected 
Articles used and soiled by patients do not carry in- 
fection.” 
' In February, 1901, immediately following these experi- 
ments, Maj. W. C. Gorgas, Chief Sanitary Officer at 
Havana, adopting the findings of the commission, set in 
operation a systematic campaign to eradicate the disease 
by exterminating the fever bearing Stegomyia. The cam- 
paign was twofold, to kill tbe mosquitoes, and destroy 
their breeding places. Every new case of fever, as soon 
as it was reported, was promptly isolated in premises 
carefully screened with fine wire screens to prevent the 
mosquitoes from reaching it, and the house in which the 
case had occurred and the houses adjacent to it were 
sealed up and filled with formaldehyde for the purpose of 
killing the mosquitoes. As the mosquitoes breed only in 
water, systematic work was. undertaken to drain stagnant 
bodies of water wherever practicable, and to put petro- 
leum upon the surface of such waters as could not be 
drained, to- screen cisterns and reservoirs, and to remove, 
so far as possible, every bit of water which might afford 
a place for mosquitoes to deposit their eggs. 
At the time when the new campaign was undertaken, 
the fever was raging to an extent and with a virulence as 
bad as it had ever been in the city at that time of the 
year. The town was infected in every part, and the non- 
immune population was probably as large as it had ever 
been in Blavana. Nevertheless, in spite of all this, the 
good results of the new treatment were almost imme- 
diately apparent. In January there had been seven deaths 
from the fever, in February, the first month of the new 
campaign, there were five ; in March one, in April, May 
and June, none, one in July, two in August, and two in 
September. From that month, in 1901, to the present 
time, there has not been a single case originating in 
Havana. The triumph over the disease was complete. 
The surgeons of the American army had accomplished 
the task set before them, and Dr. Walter Reed, the guid- 
ing spirit of the board, had won a name among the great 
benefactors of the human race. 
SUCCESSFUL FROG CULTURE. 
There are printed to-day by a fortunate because in- 
structive coincidence two papers relating to- frogs. One 
records the practical extermination of frogs from a river 
in wlTich they formerly abounded. The other, by Mr. 
William E. Meehan, Pennsylvania’s Commissioner of- 
Fisheries, relates the success of an enterprise of arti- 
ficially raising frogs in vast numbers. A reading of Mr. 
Meehan’s paper gives abundant reason for accepting frog 
culture as a thing, accomplished. ■ If the. term culture shall 
be objected to, we may at least designate it as frog farm- 
ing. The plan is simplicity itself. Prepare a suitable 
place for the planting of spawn, provide food, protect the 
little frogs from the rapacity of the big ones. There is 
nothing complicated in the method, and yet the condi- 
tions making for success were arrived at only after a 
series of years of experiment and ingenious devising and 
close study of the subject. 
Mr. Meehan and his associates have achieved success 
in the new field of food production. Others will follow. 
Frog growing will become a recognized branch of the 
work of fish commissioners. The success of Mr. 
Meehan’s work means the contribution of an important 
and valuable factor to the food supply. His achievement 
is of wide interest and . will have an equally wide and 
grateful recognition. 
General Emmons Clark, whose death occurred on 
Aug. 9, and the late E. R. Wilbur were life-long friends. 
General Clark was a constant reader of the Forest and 
Stream, and it is recalled that at one time, while he was 
Colonel of the Seventh Regiment, desiring to complete 
the file of the paper for the armory library, he paid ^ 
fabulous price for 3 single inissing number, - 
