From an Easy ChairLankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray), Sir
History
From an Easy Chair
Lankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray), Sir
Natural history; Science
The actual germ, microbe, or minute parasitic organism which causes
yellow fever, and is carried by the fasciate gnat, has not yet been
detected. Nevertheless, without seeing and isolating the microbe, the
medical men of America (Sternberg, Finlay, Carroll, and others) have,
by destroying the gnat and preventing its access to men--especially to
patients already infected, and, therefore, certain to infect the gnats
and cause them to spread the disease--practically made an end of yellow
fever in many great cities of the New World, where it was only six
years ago an ever-present horror, striking men down with a suddenness
and with a deadliness which paralysed human activity. Here, as in other
cases, intelligent appreciation of the results of science by a governor
or a municipality has saved thousands of lives. On the other hand, in
Rio de Janeiro, “the opposition encountered by the sanitary authorities
of the city from political factions and the ridicule to which they
were subjected by the local Press” were insuperable (I quote from an
official report), and so a few more thousand lives were sacrificed
before the master was recognised and the proffered safety accepted. In
Vera Cruz, in New Orleans, and in Panama yellow fever has been reduced
to a vanishing quantity by removing the pools and tanks in which the
fasciate gnat can breed, and by making use of wire-gauze to prevent
the access of mosquitoes to houses, bed-chambers, drains, and baths,
and especially to prevent not only their access to, but their egress
from, the rooms and beds of patients already infected with disease.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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