Recent researches concerning the etiology, propagation, and prevention of yellow fever, by the United States Army Commission / by Walter Reed.

  • Walter Reed
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Recent researches concerning the etiology, propagation, and prevention of yellow fever, by the United States Army Commission / by Walter Reed. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    military garrison of Columbia Barracks, near Quemados, Cuba, and also in the city of Havana. As yellow fever was already prevailing at the time of our arrival in Cuba suitable material for the scientific study of this disease was immediately available. The Etiology of Yellow Fever. Before giving the results of our investigations it may be well to recall the situation as regards the etiology of yellow fever at that time. Briefly it may be said that the claims of all investigators for the discovery of the specific agent of yellow fever—since modern bacteriological methods had come into use—had been disproved by the exhaustive observations of Sternberg, published in 1890, except that made by Sanarelli® for a small, motile bacillus isolated by bim- from the blood drawn during life in two of six cases of yellow fever, and from the blood and organs after death in seven of twelve cases of this disease (58 °/,), studied at Montevideo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The results obtained, however, by those who had promptly undertaken to investigate Sanarelli’s claim for the specific character of Bacillus acteroides, seemed to show a lack of agreement such as has never been reported, as far as the writer can recall, in connection with the supposed specific cause of any of the other acute infections. Thus while Achinard and Woodson ® had, during the epidemic of 1897 in New Orleans, La., isolated a bacillus, claimed by them to be identical with B. icterordes, from the venous blood in 4 out of 5 cases, and from yellow fever cadavers in 32 out of 39 cases (82°/,), Portier”, working in the same city and during the same epidemic, could only obtain this bacillus 3 times in 51 autopsies, and failed to obtain it at all in cultures made from the venous blood during life in 10 cases. Again, while Wasdin and Geddings®, in the city of Havana, were able to cultivate B. icterovdes from blood withdrawn from the lobe of the ear, “not earlier than the third day of the disease” in 13 of 14 cases (92°8°/,), and to find it in 85°7 °/, of their necropsies, Agramonte , studying the disease on the Island of Cuba, failed to isolate B. icteroides in a single instance from blood drawn from the lobe of the ear in 37 cases or from the blood drawn from a vein at the bend of the elbow in 31 cases, at various stages of the disease. The latter observer, however, reported finding this bacillus at autopsy in 11 of 35 cases (31:4 °/,). Without going further into detail, we may say that the results obtained by Lutz” and
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