SOME PIONEERS IN MOSQUITO SANITATION AND OTHER MOSQUITO WORK. II.
By Dr. L. O. HOWARD
BUREAU OF ENTOMOLOGY
Dr. Oswaldo Concalves Cruz, director of the Institute Oswaldo Cruz, Rio Janeiro, Brazil. The work of the Oswaldo Cruz Institute in regard to the carriage of disease by insects has been of the highest type. The men are trained in all bacteriological and morphological methods, and their work has placed the institute among the first in the world. Dr. Cruz is responsible for the early and complete elimination of yellow fever from Rio Janeiro and for its reduction throughout Brazil.
Dr. A. Lutz, chef de service, Oswaldo Cruz Institute, Rio Janeiro, Brazil, formerly director of the Bacteriological Institute, São Paulo, Brazil; well-known worker in helminthology, pathology and bacteriology, as well as entomology; he has done much work on the mosquitoes of Brazil, and has conducted studies of great importance in regard to the relation of insects and disease.
Dr. E. A. Goeldi, professor of zoology in the Cantonal University, Berne, Switzerland, formerly director of the Museum at Para, Brazil, which he founded, and which is known as the Museu Goeldi. He published while in Brazil an elaborate monograph of the mosquitoes of that country, discussing these insects from every point of view.
Dr. Eduardo Liceaga, president of the Superior Board of Health of Mexico; a very enlightened and progressive sanitarian of the highest scientific attainments. He immediately grasped the importance of the malarial and yellow-fever discoveries and put into effect measures which soon rid the Republic of Mexico of all traces of yellow fever.
Dr. Carlos J. Findlay, president of the Board of Health, Havana, Cuba. Dr. Findlay early announced the carriage of yellow fever by a certain species of mosquito (the same one, in fact, which was definitely proved to be the carrier), but his experiments were not conclusive, and his conclusions were not accepted by the scientific and medical world until nearly twenty years later, when the U. S. Army Commission (Reed, Carroll, Lazear and Agramonte) brought about the overwhelming proof which was generally satisfactory. Findlay's announcement, however, was based on many years' study of the disease and of the mosquito vector.
Dr. Aristides Agramonte, Havana, Cuba, professor of bacteriology and experimental pathology, Havana University, Cuba; president of the Board of Infectious Diseases, Cuban Sanitary Department. He was the only Cuban member of the U. S. Army Yellow Fever Commission which proved the transmission of yellow fever by Aedes calopus (formerly called Stegomyia fasciata) and is the only surviving member of the Commission.
Dr. A. F. A. King. Dr. King was professor of obstetrics in Columbian (now George Washington) University, Washington, D. C, and a well-known Washington physician. He was a man of unusual mentality, and as early as 1883 published in The Popular Science Monthly an extended article in support of the idea that malaria is carried by mosquitoes. His array of reasons was so great and his argument so convincing that his paper has been considered the very strongest of any on the carriage of disease by insects, published prior to the actual proof. He died December 13, 1914, in Washington, D. C.
Dr. Walter Reed, U. S. A., president of the U. S. Army Yellow Fever Commission, he who is to he given the principal credit for the scientific demonstration of the transmission of yellow fever by a mosquito. Dr. Reed died shortly after the complete demonstration was announced, his death being attributable in part to the strenuous work which he had done in connection with these investigations. He was always very loath to have his picture published, and for a long time the only one known was that taken in his early manhood, and which the writer used in an article in the Century Magazine of October, 1903. The present picture is evidently from a photograph taken not long before his death, and has been given to the writer by the Army Medical School at the request of Surgeon-General Gorgas.
Dr. James Carroll, U. S. V., member of the U. S. Army Yellow Fever Commission. Dr. Carroll himself had yellow fever in the course of the investigation, as the result of a puncture by the yellow fever mosquito, and died a few years afterwards, his death being attributable in a large measure to the disease and to his hard work during the investigation period.
Dr. Jesse W. Lazear, U. S. V., member of the Yellow Fever Commission. Dr. Lazear was a Johns Hopkins man and died in October, 1900, during the progress of the investigation as the result of a bite of an infected mosquito.
Dr. J. H. White, assistant surgeon general, U. S. Public Health Service. In 1905 Dr. White was given full control by the national, state and city authorities of the yellow-fever epidemic in New Orleans. His work was done strictly on the mosquito basis, and the epidemic, which was fully started and which would certainly otherwise have resulted in thousands of deaths, was wiped out before frost for the first time in the history of yellow fever. The total death list was less than 500.
Dr. W. C. Gorgas, surgeon-general, U. S. Army. General Gorgas (then major) was the chief sanitary officer of Havana, in charge of sanitary work in that city from 1898 to 1902. He immediately grasped the importance of the discoveries of the Army Yellow Fever Commission, and put in operation methods of combating yellow fever, based upon the mosquito idea, which eliminated the disease in Havana. He was made colonel and assistant surgeon general by a special act of congress for this work. He was chief sanitary officer of the Panama Canal Zone from March, 1904, until the completion of the canal, and controlled yellow fever, malaria and other tropical diseases so perfectly as to prove beyond all peradventure the feasibility of an extended occupation of tropical regions by white races.
