peradventure--that yellow fever could be
transmitted by mosquitoes, and equally the negative proposition--that it
could not be transmitted by fomites. An interval of twelve or more days
was found to be necessary after the mosquito has bitten a yellow fever
patient before it is capable of transmitting the infection. Lazear
permitted himself to be bitten by a stray mosquito while conducting his
experiments in the yellow fever hospital. Bitten on the thirteenth, he
sickened on the eighteenth and died on the twenty-fifth of September,
but not until he had succeeded in showing in two instances that
mosquitoes could convey the infection. He added another to the long list
of members of the profession who have laid down their lives in search
of the causes of disease. Of such men as Lazear and of Myers of the
Liverpool Yellow-Fever Commission, Dutton and young Manson, may fitly be
sung from the noblest of American poems the tribute which Lowell paid to
Harvard's sons who fell in the War of Secession:

Many in sad faith sought for her,
Many with crossed hands sighed for her;
But these, our brothers, fought for her,
At life's dear peril wrought for her,
So loved her that they died for her.

Fortunately, the commander-in-chief at the time in Cuba was General
Leonard Wood, who had been an army surgeon, and he was the first to
appreciate the importance of the discovery. The sanitation of Havana was
placed in the hands of Dr. Gorgas, and within nine months the city was
cleared of yellow fever, and, with the exception of a slight outbreak
after the withdrawal of the American troops, has since remained free
from a disease which had been its scourge for centuries. As General Wood
remarked, "Reed's discovery has resulted in the saving of more lives
annually than were lost in the Cuban War, and saves the commercial
interest of the world a greater financial loss each year than the
cost of the Cuban War. He came to Cuba at a time when one third of the
officers of my staff died of yellow fever, and we were discouraged at
the failure of our efforts to control it." Following the example of
Havana other centres were attacked, at Vera Cruz and in Brazil, with the
same success, and it is safe to say that now, thanks to the researches
of Reed and his colleagues, with proper measures, no country need fear a
paralyzing outbreak of this once dreaded disease.

The scientific researches in the last two decades of the nineteen