Yellow fever and malaria : evidence given before the Royal Commission / by William Osler.

  • Osler, William, Sir, 1849-1919.
Date:
[1908?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Yellow fever and malaria : evidence given before the Royal Commission / by William Osler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    [.Issued by the Research Defence Society. C3 •3i. Yellow FeVer and Malaria. ,ct- Evidence given before the Royal Commission by William Osier, M.D., F.R.S., Regius Professor of Medicine, Oxford. Reprinted, by permission of the Controller of His Majesty's Stationery Office, from the Appendix to the Fourth Report of the Royal Commission, p. 157. (The questions put by the Commissioners are printed in italics.) I think that the story of yellow fever illustrates, perhaps, more satisfactorily than any other, the remarkable way in which experi- ments, carefully devised and carried out, may influence not only our knowledge of the etiology of a disease, but may influence extensively the commercial relations of nations, and save not only thousands of lives but millions of pounds annually. Yellow fever has been the great scourge of the regions round the Caribbean Sea, more particu- larly Mexico, the West Indian Islands, Brazil, and every few years it has spread into the Southern States of America, and occasionally has reached Philadelphia, and even as far north as Boston. In the early part of the last century on several occasions it reached Europe, and there were extensive outbreaks in Spain, costing some thousands of lives. Many attempts had been made to find out the cause of the disease, but all had failed up to the year 1900, when a Commission was sent to Havannah by the United States Government especially to investigate the cause of yellow fever. That Commission, com- posed of Drs. Watten Bead, Carroll, Lazlear, and Agramonte, recog- nised particularly the relations of the mosquito to the disease, and they went out with the specific object of determining, if possible, to discover the germs of the disease. The experiments which they devised were carried out in a United States Army Camp in Havannah, and they are among the most remarkable that have ever been made. The camp was entirely isolated, so that there could be no possibility of communication with the outside. It was composed of a certain number of immunes, that is to say, persons who were no longer sus- ceptible to yellow fever— In consequence of havint/ had it, do you mean i—In consequence of having had it—and of non-immunes. That is a common division of the population in Brazil and Havannah—namely into immunes and non-immunes. A man is asked whether he is immune or not.