THE MOSQUITO'S GOLD MEDALLISTS

Evening Star, Issue 21216, 24 September 1932, Page 5

THE MOSQUITO'S GOLD MEDALLISTS

Dr Walter Reed and his American volunteers have just been remembered by the American Treasury, which has presented the survivors with gold medals.

Thirty-one years have passed since their exploit. It was no martial adventure, but just an affair of outposts with a dreaded disease. The disease was that of yellow fever. Yellow fever has not yet vanished from the world, but when Dr Reed and his volunteers set out to extinguish it some 100,000 people had died of it in three years in Cuba.

Dr Reed established a camp in Cuba to find out all that could bo known of this enemy of the human race. It was believed and first asserted by Dr Carlos Findlay, of Havana, that the germ of yellow fever was carried by the Stegomyia mosquito, as the germ of malaria is carried by the Anopheles. It was necessary not merely to surmise this but to prove it by experiment, and the only way to do so was to infect human beings who would allow themselves to be bitten by Stegomyia, which already had bitten yellow fever victims.

If these human subjects then developed yellow fever the proof would be established that the Stegomyia mosquitoes transferred the germ from one person to another. But no investigator, however eager or sure, would care to subject his coworkers to such a dangerous experiment without telling them of its risks. Dr Reed called on his camp of young men for volunteers.

Two at once offered. They were to be bitten by suspected mosquitoes. Dr Reed explained the danger, and the suffering they would undergo when yellow fever developed in them even if it were cured. They were offered compensation. They refused it.

They agreed on the sole condition that they should have no money reward. They were mere privates in the United States army, but they did not want pay for doing their duty. Wo are sure they did not call it heroism. But Dr Reed raised his hand to his cap, saying: “ Gentlemen, I salute you.” The experiment proved the point. Stegomyia was the criminal, and we are glad that the two volunteers recovered. But both they and the other men and students in the camp were subjected each day and every day to infection. The reality of this danger has been shown since on the West Coast of Africa, where yellow fever still lingers and where a great Japanese investigator and an English one both succumbed to it while making experiments two years ago. But Walter Reed and his associates struck the first resounding blow against the disease, which has now been all but eradicated in Cuba wherever the Stegomyia mosquito can be kept under control.

Not all of the twenty-two of Reed’s brave company have survived to receive their medals. Dr Reed himself died shortly afterwards, though not of the fever he had helped to. conquer. One other did. All are worthy of the gold medals given thirty-one years after, and of the greater honour of full remembrance by the world.