Lazear, and to the corps of intrepid and dedicated volunteers who offered themselves for experiment, must go the credit for demonstrating and establishing the fact that explained the mysterious behavior of yellow fever and offered a method of successfully combating it. As Dr. Agramonte wrote in his biographical sketch of Dr. Finlay, speaking of the parts played by the Cuban doctor and the U.S. Army Board, "the great credit due the one robs not the other of a particle of his glory." 39[1]
Already, even before the experiments were concluded and the results presented, the findings had begun to be put into effect in the American Forces occupying Cuba. At the suggestion of Maj. Jefferson Randolph Kean, Acting Chief Surgeon, General Wood issued General Orders No. 6 on 21 December 1900, prescribing mosquito-control methods for application at all posts on the island, "the Chief Surgeon of the Department having reported that it is now well established that * * * yellow fever * * * (is) transmitted by the bites of mosquitoes * * *." 40[2]
Reed himself had been positive ever since Kissinger came down with yellow fever that, as he wrote Lt. Albert E. Truby on the 10th, "the theory is all right." 41[3] The theory, as he wrote his wife on 9 December, was Finlay's, "and he deserves great credit for having suggested it, but as he did nothing to prove it, it was rejected by all, including General Sternberg. Now we have put it beyond cavil * * *." 42[4]
Writing to his wife again, in the closing minutes of the closing year of the 19th century, Reed expressed feelingly the glow of modest exultation at this great accomplishment:
Only ten minutes of the old century remains. Here I have been sitting, reading that most wonderful book, La Roche on Yellow Fever written in 1853. Forty-seven years later it has been permitted to me and my assistants to lift the impenetrable veil that has surrounded the causation of this most wonderful, dreadful pest of humanity and to put it on a rational and scientific basis. I thank God that this has been accomplished during the latter days of the old century. May its cure be wrought in the early days of the new! The prayer that has been mine for twenty years, that I might be permitted to do something to alleviate human suffering has been granted! * * * Hark, there go the twenty-four buglers in concert, all sounding "taps" for the old year. 43[5]
