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CSU 27/2009: CARLOS FINLAY ON YELLOW FEVER/ MORE ON JOHN SNOW / MORE FROM LOUIS PASTEUR

Thursday, 7th of May 2009

 CSU 27/2009: CARLOS FINLAY ON YELLOW FEVER/ MORE  ON JOHN SNOW / MORE FROM LOUIS PASTEUR
  
 
 CARLOS FINLAY ON YELLOW FEVER
 
 Carlos Juan Finlay's 1881 address to the Academy of Sciences of Havana,
 'The Mosquito Hypothetically Considered as an Agent in the Transmission of
 Yellow Fever Poison,' laid the foundations for vector control in reducing
 transmission of yellow fever. The speech is available in English at
 www.deltaomega.org/finlay.pdf
 
 Finlay's identification of yellow fever as a mosquito-borne disease
 permitted later workers, such as Gorgas, to formulate the vector control
 strategies which would permit work to continue on the Panama Canal, a
 project unlikely to have been completed without protection of the
 workforce  from yellow fever at a time when no vaccine was available.
 
 From Finlay's conclusions:
 
 'If the inoculation of yellow fever through the mosquito should finally be
 proved an incontrovertible fact, and that this mode of transmission of the
 disease is the usual and most common manner in which the yellow fever
 poison is transmitted; then the various conditions which affect the life
 and  development of this insect would explain the anomalies (so obscure and
 
 difficult of explanation otherwise) which have been observed in the history
 of the distribution of yellow fever, and we would have in our hands the
 means of avoiding or limiting, on one side, the extension of the disease,
 whilst on the other, we would preserve through benign prophylactic
 inoculations, those individuals who would be exposed to the risks of
 contracting this formidable malady.'
 
 
 MORE ON JOHN SNOW
 
 
 Since reprinting The New Yorker article on John Snow, I have found, on the
 Net, a copy of ‘On the Mode of Communication of Cholera', at
 www.deltaomega.org/snowfin.pdf
 
 
 MORE FROM PASTEUR
 
 
 Reader Ian Pett points out several aphorisms from Louis Pasteur at
 http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/27132.html
 
 
 Good reading.
 
 
 BD