Handbook for the ship's medicine chest / by George W. Stoner ; prepared by direction of the Surgeon-General.

  • Stoner, George W.
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Handbook for the ship's medicine chest / by George W. Stoner ; prepared by direction of the Surgeon-General. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    there are present within its walls contaminated mosquitoes capable of convey- ing the parasite of the disease. The spread of yellow fever can most effectually he controlled by measures directed to the destruction of the mosquitoes and protection of the sick against the bites of these insects. The commission showed also that the mosquito, to become infected, must bite a yellow-fever patient during the first three or four days of his illness, and that an interval of about twelve days or more after this bite appears to be necessary before the mosquito is capable of communicating the disease to a person. After this interval the mos- quito is permanently infected and can cause the development of the disease within five davs after biting. This conclusion as to the time elapsing from the infection of the mosquito to the time it becomes capable of communicating the disease to man is in accord with and fully confirms the extensive observations previously made bv Surg. Henry It. Carter, of the I . S. Public Health and Marine-Hospital Service. Before it was known that the mosquito is the carrier of the disease Surgeon Carter proved “ a period of extrinsic incubation corresponding to the cycle of devel- opment of the disease in the mosquito. In 1900 yellow fever raged throughout Cuba and was very severe in Habana. During this year and in this city (Habana) the com- mission made the scientific investigation and obtained the results which have revolutionized all theories as to the prevention and spread of yellow fever. Witness the fact reported January 9, 1902, by Maj. W. C. Gorgas, chief sanitary officer of Cuba, that, with the aid of a corps of men, working in accordance with the recommendations of the commission, the disease has been completely eradicated from the city of Habana. The efficient maritime quarantine maintained by the U. S. Public Health and Marine-Hospital Service must also be taken into consid- eration, for while the disease was stamped out of the city by the measures referred to, it was kept out by similar measures directed to the cleansing of ships and to the isolation and protection of passen- gers arriving from other infected ports. Formerly the hotbed of yellow fever and for upward of a hundred years the very center of infection, Habana is now free from the disease, not a single case of yellow fever having occurred there during the last three years: and all this as a result of the wholesale destruc- tion of the mosquitoes and their breeding places, in the city and on board of ships, and the protection of the sick by means of properly constructed mosquito screens. Yellow fever prevails chiefly in low countries along the coast, and seldom extends to regions above an elevation of 1,000 feet. It is