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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