Sanitation -- Cuba -- Havana; Sanitation -- Panama; Yellow fever -- Cuba -- Havana
He had a small frame house built, fourteen by twenty feet, well
screened-in with wire netting, so that mosquitoes could not get in
or out. This building he had divided into two compartments by a
partition extending down the center, made of wire netting, and it
was known as the infected mosquito building. It was well ventilated.
Most persons at this time believed that in some way the air conveyed
yellow fever. Dr. Reed wished to show that this was not the case.
He put two non-immunes in this building, one in each room. These
two men breathed exactly the same air, and had exactly the same
surroundings, with one single exception which I will in a moment
point out. But they were entirely separated by the wire netting. He
let them live and sleep in these rooms for several days, so as to
demonstrate that there was no yellow-fever infection in the building.
He then put fifteen infected stegomyia in one of the rooms; left the
man in this room for thirty minutes, announcing that the room was now
infected. He took the man out of this infected room, but left in the
other room two men on the other side of the wire netting. He stated
that the man who had stayed thirty minutes in the infected room would
come down with yellow fever within three or four days, and that the
other men, who were only separated from him by wire netting, and who
breathed and were surrounded by exactly the same air, would not get
sick.
He explained that the only difference between the two rooms was
that in the infected room, infection had been brought about by
liberating there fifteen stegomyia mosquitoes which had previously
bitten patients sick of yellow fever. The man from the infected room
was on the afternoon of the same day again placed in this room for
twenty minutes, and on the following day he was a third time put in
the room for fifteen minutes. On the first visit he was bitten by
seven mosquitoes; on the second, by five; on the third, by three. At
the end of the fourth (Christmas) day, Reed showed the man from the
infected room down with yellow fever, and the men who had lived and
slept in the other room, separated only by wire netting, perfectly
well. He called attention to the fact that the only difference in
the exposure of these men was that the sick man had been in a room
for thirty minutes, with fifteen infected stegomyia mosquitoes. He
claimed that this was a demonstration that the female stegomyia
mosquito could transmit yellow fever, and that the atmosphere alone
could not. Many of the visitors to Dr. Reed’s camp were clinically
familiar with this disease, and the case was sufficiently marked to
be easily recognized by all as being a case of yellow fever.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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