The Scientific Monthly, October to December, 1915Various
Science
The Scientific Monthly, October to December, 1915
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
We three left the yellow-fever hospital together that
afternoon; I got down from the doherty-wagon where the road
forks, going on to the Military Hospital, while Carroll and
Lazear continued on their way to Camp Columbia. On the
following day, Lazear telephoned to me in the evening, to say
that Carroll was down with a chill after a sea bath taken at
the beach, a mile and a half from Camp, and that they suspected
he had malaria; we therefore made an appointment to examine his
blood together the following morning.
When I reached Camp Columbia I found that Carroll had been
examining his own blood early that morning, not finding any
malarial parasites; he told me he thought he had "caught cold"
at the beach: his suffused face, blood-shot eyes and general
appearance, in spite of his efforts at gaiety and unconcern,
shocked me beyond words. The possibility of his having yellow
fever did not occur to him just then; when it did, two days
later, he declared he must have caught it at my autopsy room in
the Military Hospital, or at "Las Animas" Hospital, where he
had been two days before taking sick. Although we insisted that
he should go to bed in his quarters, we could only get him to
rest upon a lounge, until the afternoon, when he felt too sick
and had to take to his bed.
Lazear and I were almost panic-stricken when we realized that
Carroll had yellow fever. We searched for all possibilities
that might throw the blame for his infection upon any other
source than the mosquito which bit him four days before;
Lazear, poor fellow, in his desire to exculpate himself, as he
related to me the details of Carroll's mosquito experiment,
repeatedly mentioned the fact that he himself had been bitten
two weeks before without any effect therefrom and finally, what
seemed to relieve his mind to some extent, was the thought that
Carroll offered himself to feed the mosquito and that he held
the tube upon his own arm until the work was consummated.
I have mentioned before that, as Lazear and I, vaguely hoping
to find malarial parasites in Carroll's blood, sat looking into
our microscopes that morning, the idea that the mosquito was
what brought him down gradually took hold of our minds, but as
our colleague had been exposed to infection in other ways, by
visiting the yellow fever hospital "Las Animas," as well as the
infected city of Havana, it was necessary to subject that same
mosquito to another test and hence the inoculation of Private
Dean, which is described in the opening chapter of this
history.
TERMINATION OF THE FIRST SERIES OF MOSQUITO EXPERIMENTS.
DEATH OF LAZEAR.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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