Page:The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology-ItsFirstCentury.djvu/130

THE WALTER REED CHAPTER 41.—Dr. Carlos Juan Finlay, whose theory of transmission of yellow fever by the bite of mosquitoes was tested and proved by Walter Reed.

and Rio de Janeiro, announced his discovery of the cause of yellow fever as an organism which he called Bacillus icteroides.

The announcement created great interest in America, where studies were promptly undertaken to check and, if possible, to confirm the reported finding. One such investigation, ordered by Surgeon General Walter W. Wyman of the Marine Hospital Service—now the United States Public Health Service—resulted in a report, in 1899, which accepted Dr. Sanarelli's claim in the fullest.

Sternberg, by this time Surgeon General of the Army, assigned the task of checking the Sanarelli discovery to two members of the staff of the Army Medical Museum—Walter Reed and James Carroll—who performed the work in the laboratories of the Museum. In a "Preliminary Report," published in the Medical News of 29 April 1899, they reported that the Sanarelli bacillus was apparently a strain of the bacillus of hog cholera rather than a cause of yellow