1898

Spanish-American War in Cuba, eventuating in vindication of yellow fever transmission (via mosquito) theories of Carlos Juan Finlay, which Matas had supported from the beginning. When yellow fever hit Siboney, Cuba in July, with only the black nurses of the 24th infantry willing to nurse the victims; eight white regiments refused (Cirillo, 92ff.) During yellow fever epidemic in Cuba in 1900, Walter Reed returns to Cuba and conducts experiments with paid volunteers establishing once and for all that mosquitos were the disease vector, not fomites (soiled clothing, bedding, etc.) in transmitting yellow fever, and further that the virus had to mature in the mosquito for two weeks before disease transmission via mosquito bite. Following war, establishment of Typhoid Commission (chaired by Walter Reed), which determined contact or comrade infection was primarily responsible for transmission of typhoid fever in military camps (Vaughan, 369ff., 386). Spanish-American War also “demonstrated the value of both hospital ships and female nursing.” Prior to the war, the Hospital Corps created in the 1880s consisted solely of male attendants. But in 1898, Army Surgeon General Sternberg sought female nurses to help cope with the emergency. Only white, unmarried nurses immune to yellow fever could enlist in the Medical Department. (Byerly I, 71-72). . . . During American occupation, William Gorgas became, successively, head of Las Animas Hospital; chief sanitary officer of Havana; and, in May 1899, chief surgeon of Havana, overseeing all health facilities: “Before the mosquito theory of yellow fever transmission, Gorgas and his staff took patient histories to get clues as to why they had caught the disease, such as if they had bad habits like drinking or visiting houses of prostitution, or had been in ‘infected’ buildings, like those at Siboney” (Byerly I, 86-87). “Yellow fever [after all] is a messy disease, producing all kinds of effluvia – vomit, blood, mucus, feces – so people reasonably believed it was a disease of filth, transferred by fomites on solid linens or other materials” (95).