above 90 ° F. Into this environment, there were introduced four large locked boxes of sheets, blankets, pillowslips, and other articles "contaminated by contact with cases of yellow fever and their discharge * * * purposely soiled with a liberal quantity of black vomit, urine and fecal matter * * *." Dr. Cooke and Privates Folk and Jernegan, all nonimmunes, entered the building, unpacked the boxes, handled and shook out their contents so as to "disseminate through the air of the room the specific agent of yellow fever, if contained in these fomites * * *," used the fomites to make their beds, and lay down to sleep upon the beds so made— and continued to do likewise for each of the next 19 nights, after which they were quarantined while other soldiers— England, Hanberry, Hildebrand, and Weatherwalks — repeated the horrible experience, even adding to it the macabre touch of sleeping in the shirts which had been worn by yellow fever victims.' 34[1]
Summing up the ordeal of the fomites, Major Reed said, in his address at Baltimore, that these volunteers, sleeping every night in a building into "which no sunlight ever came" and which was purposely designed to lack air ventilation, "engaged in the morning in packing boxes with garments much soiled by contact with the bodies and excreta of yellow fever patients, and at night unpacking these same boxes in order to obtain articles for their beds and clothing for their bodies; in other words, sleeping in the very beds and garments just vacated by cases of yellow fever * * * averaging each 21 nights amid such surroundings, came out of this pesthouse * * * none the worse for their exposure. Not one had contracted the disease." 35[2]
"Yellow fever can no more be transmitted in that way than intermittent fever," Dr. Reed wrote his wife, while the experiments were still underway. Later, in an address before the American Public Health Association, meeting at Buffalo on 18 September 1901— a year after he had presented his "Preliminary Note" to the same organization— Reed declared that the doctrine of the spread of yellow fever by fomites "burst like a bubble" at the first touch of "actual experiment upon human beings." 36[3]
In clearing up theories, there was another that called for attention— the theory of infection from a contaminated house. To test this, there was the "Infected Mosquito Building"— well ventilated, tightly screened, with a mosquito-proof screen dividing its interior into two parts, differing only in that one side of the building was free from mosquitoes, while infected insects were released in the other side. In this side, Mr. Moran allowed 15 mosquitoes to
