The Scientific Monthly, October to December, 1915Various
Science
The Scientific Monthly, October to December, 1915
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
Fortunately for us, the military governor of the island at that
time, Brigadier General Leonard Wood, was a man who had
received a thorough medical training; broad and clear-minded,
he fully appreciated the importance of what might be the
outcome of our researches. We found in him the moral support
which we so much needed and, further, he promptly placed at the
disposal of the board sufficient funds with which to carry on
the experiments to the end. I firmly believe that had other
been the circumstances, had a more military and less scientific
man been at the head of the government, the investigation would
have terminated there and then, and many years would have
passed, with hundreds of lives uselessly sacrificed, before we
could have attained our present remarkable sanitary triumphs.
We immediately set about choosing a location for our camp. I
had already looked over the ground, preferring the proximity of
Camp Columbia, from where supplies could be easily obtained and
because the Military Hospital there could be used for treating
the cases that we intended to produce; I was therefore
favorably impressed with the seclusion offered by a spot
situated a short distance from the main road, in a farm, named
San Jose, belonging to my friend Dr. Ignacio Rojas, of Havana.
Major Reed decided upon this place after looking at many others
in the neighborhood, so that on the twentieth of November we
inaugurated our camp, which we named Camp Lazear, in honor to
the memory of our dead colleague, consisting then of seven army
tents, guarded by a military garrison, composed of men who had
been carefully selected by virtue of their previous good record
and their interest in the work to be undertaken.
Feeling that we had proved, to ourselves at least, the agency
of the mosquito in yellow fever, it became our duty to disprove
the theory, until then held as a certainty by many authorities,
to the effect that the soiled bedding and clothing, the
secretions and excreta of patients, were infectious and in some
way carried the germ of the disease. We therefore designed a
small wooden building, to be erected a short distance from the
tense, with a capacity of 2,800 cubic feet. The walls and
ceiling were absolutely tight, the windows and vestibuled door
screened and all precautions taken to prevent the entrance of
insects.
Into this, called the "infected clothing building," three beds
and a stove, to maintain a high tropical temperature, were
introduced; also mattresses and pillows, underwear, pajamas,
towels, sheets, blankets, etc., soiled with blood and
discharges from yellow fever cases: these articles were put on
the beds, hung about the room and packed in a trunk and two
boxes placed there for the purpose.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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