Page:The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology-ItsFirstCentury.djvu/140

THE WALTER REED CHAPTER sion of the disease— namely, that it was a matter of timing of the bites, both of the original patient from whom the disease was transferred and also of the transferee. To become infected, the mosquito must bite the sick patient within the first 3 days of illness; to transfer the infection, at least 12 days must have elapsed since the infection was acquired by the mosquito. The nine unsuccessful attempts to produce the disease were explained by the recorded fact that the original patient was bitten after the third day of his illness, or that the attempt to convey the disease was made less than 12 days after the mosquito was infected.

Dr. Lazear's own case presented a puzzle. Reed had no doubt that it was due to the bite of a mosquito but could not be sure that the mosquito was one of those reared in the laboratory. Dr. Lazear told Major Carroll and Maj. William C. Gorgas that, while engaged in letting his experimental mosquitoes bite yellow fever patients at the Las Animas Hospital in Havana, a stray mosquito had landed on his hand, and he had permitted it to drink its fill. Obscure and unfinished notations in Lazear's pocket memorandum book, however, indicated that he might have applied some of the laboratory mosquitoes to his own arm, knowing by that time that there was every chance of infecting himself with a possibly fatal disease.

This raised a question as to how the case of Lazear would be treated in the report. There was no doubt in Reed's mind of his illness and death from the bite of a mosquito, and there is persuasive evidence that he believed that the mosquito was actually one of the purebred laboratory strain which Lazear had deliberately applied to himself, and not the stray insect which Lazear hail mentioned during his illness to Carroll and Gorgas. The reason for the discrepancy, it is surmised, was possibly an apprehension on the part of the sick man that his life insurance might be forfeited if he deliberately infected himself with a possibly fatal disease. Reed decided to list the cause of Dr. Lazear's lamented death as the bite of the mosquito in Las Animas Hospital, as related by Lazear. but he accepted the case as evidence of the validity of the mosquito theory, adding strength to the Carroll and Dean cases.

While analyzing the evidence resulting from the preliminary experiments, Reed was intensely occupied in setting up arrangements for further experiments