Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/237

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 Between the 30th of June, 1881, and the 2d of December, 1893, eighty-eight persons have been so inoculated. All were white adults, uniting the conditions which justify the assumption that they were susceptible to yellow fever. Only three were women. The chronological distribution of the inoculations was as follows: Seven in 1881, ten in 1883, nine in 1885, three in 1886, twelve in 1887, nine in 1888, seven in 1889, ten in 1890, eight in 1891, three in 1892, and ten in 1893.

The yellow fever patients upon whom the mosquitoes were contaminated were, almost in every instance, well-marked cases of the albuminuric or melanoalbuminuric forms, in the second, third, fourth, fifth, or sixth day of the disease. In some of the susceptible subjects, the inoculation was repeated when the source of the contamination appeared uncertain.

Among the eighty-seven who have been under observation, the following results have been recorded:

Within a term of days, varying between five and twenty-five after the inoculation, one presented a mild albuminuric attack, and thirteen only 'acclimation fevers.'

While Finlay's theory appeared to be plausible and to explain many of the facts relating to the etiology of yellow fever, his experimental inoculations not only failed to give it substantial support, but the negative results, as reported by himself, seemed to be opposed to the view that yellow fever is transmitted by the mosquito. It is true that he reports one case which presented a mild albuminuric attack' which we may accept as an attack of yellow fever. But in view of the fact that this case occurred in the city of Havana, where yellow fever is endemic, and of the eighty-six negative results from similar inoculations, the inference seemed justified that in this case the disease was contracted in some other way than as a result of the so-called 'mosquito inoculation.' The thirteen cases in which 'only acclimation fevers' occurred 'within a term of days varying between five and twenty-five after the inoculation' appeared to me to have no value as giving support to Finlay's theory; first, because these 'acclimation fevers' could not be identified as mild cases of yellow fever; second, because the ordinary period of incubation in yellow fever, is less than five days; and, third, because these individuals, having recently arrived in Havana, were liable to attacks of yellow fever, or of 'acclimation fever' as a result of their residence in this city and quite independently of Dr. Finlay's mosquito inoculations. For these reasons Dr. Finlay's experiments failed to convince the medical profession generally of the truth of his theory relating to the transmission of yellow fever, and this important question remained in doubt and a subject of controversy. One party regarded the disease as personally contagious and supposed it to be communicated directly from the sick to the well, as in the case of other contagious diseases, such as smallpox, scarlet fever, etc. Opposed to this theory was the fact that in innumerable instances non-immune persons had been known to care for yellow fever patients as nurses, or physicians, without contracting the