The Mosquito Hypothetically Considered as an Agent in the Transmission of Yellow Fever Poison *
Charles Finlay
Reprinted from: The New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, 1881/82, vol. ix, New series, pp. 601-16. Issue for February, 1882.
It is interesting that in this same volume, in the issue under date of July, 1881, there should appear a paper entitled The Electro-Galvanic Theory of Yellow Fever—Disturbed Electricity the Exciting Cause by Henry Stone, M.D. After calling attention to the “popular belief that telegraph operators, other things being equal, are especially liable to violence of attack” of yellow fever, this author concludes that he “feels much encouraged in the belief that disturbed electricity will yet be proven to be the exciting cause of this fever; that there is a deficiency of air-electricity at high tension and probably negative; that animal electricity is in excess and also changed to negative; that the earth may be excited beyond the norm; that the irritation starts in the nervous system; that it will yet be acknowledged that the vast organic changes are the direct result of the nervous aberration.” (p. 45) (New Orleans Med. & Surg. J., 1881/82, ix, n. s., 25-46) [Ed.]