Excerpt from A Few General Directions With Regard to Destroying Mosquitoes, Particularly the Yellow Fever Mosquito

The army board of which Doctor Reed was president recognized that in Cuba, where they did their work, it would have to be entirely evident that the men experimented upon could not get yellow fever accidentall in Habana, or anywhere else, but only, if at all, in the course of t e experiment. They therefore took a piece of unoccupied ground about six miles from Habana and built there a cam of material which could not have been infected with yellow fever. E then got men who had never suffered from yellow fever and lace them in these tents. It was known that if a man exposed to ye low fever were going to have it the disease would develop in less than six days, and If he sed through six days safe and sound he was known to have esca that particular exposure.

T e board therefore argued that if they kept their men in this camp for a period of two wee 9 they would be safe from any exposure which might have occurred before their coming to the camp. They also had to provide means which would insure their men not leaving the camp, contracting the disease outside, and thus brin ing infection into the camp. This was done by a military guard, w o allowed no one to go out or come in without Doctor Reed's permission. Things were now so arranged that if a mosquito was allowed to bite a man, and yellow fever developed, the board could be certain that the yellow fever was due to the bite of the mosquito alone. They did a great deal of experimenting here before they worked out all the detalls of the way in which the mosquito actually conveys yellow fever. They finally found out that if a female mosquito of one particular species, the ste omyia, was applied to a yellow-fever patient in the first three days 0 his Sickness, and then kept from ten to twenty days and allowed to bite a human being who had never had yellow fever, he would very generally develop the disease within six days after the bite.

The also found out that this same man, before he had been bitten by the ye low-fever mosquito, could sleep in the bed in which a patient had died of yellow fever, could be covered with a black vomit from a yellow-fever patient, or be exposed to the emanations from yellow fever in any other way, and as long as he was kept safe from the bite of the mosquito he would not have yellow fever; but this same man, after all this exposure, if afterwards bitten by an infected yellow-fever mosquito, would very certainly catch the disease. I think it would be interesting to give some of the details of the work by which this great discovery was demonstrated.

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