Insects and Diseases: A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread or Cause some of our Common DiseasesDoane, Rennie Wilbur
Science
Insects and Diseases: A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread or Cause some of our Common Diseases
Doane, Rennie Wilbur
Insect pests; Insects as carriers of disease
As long as the United States held control at Havana the yellow fever
was kept in check by fighting the mosquitoes, when this vigilance was
relaxed the fever began to appear again and the Cubans found that it was
necessary to keep up the fight against the mosquitoes if the island was
to be kept free from the disease.
THE FIGHT IN NEW ORLEANS
In the summer of 1905 came another opportunity to put the knowledge
gained during these experiments to a practical test. Samuel Hopkins
Adams in his article in _McClure's Magazine_, June, 1906, says of the
beginning of this fight:
"Eight years before, the mosquito-plague had infected the great,
busy, joyous metropolis of the south. Ignorant of the real
processes of the infection, New Orleans had fought it blindly,
frantically, in an agony of panic, and when at last the frost put
an end to the helpless city's plight, she lay spent and prostrate.
The yellow fever of 1905 came with a more formidable and unexpected
suddenness than that of 1897. It sprang into life like a secret and
armed uprising in the midst of the city, full-fledged and terrible.
But there arose against it the trained fighting line of scientific
knowledge. Accepting, with a fine courage of faith that most
important preventive discovery since vaccination, the mosquito
dogma, the Crescent City marshaled her defenses. This time there
was no panic, no mob-rule of terrified thousands, no mad rushing
from stunned inertia to wildly impractical action; but instead the
enlistment of the whole city in an army of sanitation. Every
citizen became a soldier of the public health. And when, long
before the plague-killing frost came, the battle was over, New
Orleans had triumphed not only in the most brilliant hygienic
victory ever achieved in America, but in a principle for which the
whole nation owes her a debt of gratitude."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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