Thinking Citizen Blog — Yellow Fever Heroes: Carlos Finlay (1833–1915), Walter Reed (1851–1902), William C. Gorgas (1854–1920), Max Theiler (1899–1972)
Thinking Citizen Blog: Thursday is Health, Health Care, and Global Health Policy Day
Today’s Topic: Yellow Fever Heroes: Carlos Finlay (1833–1915), Walter Reed (1851–1902), William C. Gorgas (1854–1920), Max Theiler (1899–1972)
In past posts, I have highlighted the work of Florence Nightingale, Norman Borlaug, John Snow, Alexander Fleming, Norman Borlaug, and Richard Cash, among others.
What public health heroes of the past do you know about that the rest of us probably don’t but would benefit from learning about?
Today, a few notes on four titans in the history of the battle against yellow fever.
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
CARLOS FINLAY (1833–1915) Cuban epidemiologist who figured out that the disease was spread by the mosquito Aedes Aegypti.
1. “He was the first to theorize, in 1881, that a mosquito was a carrier, now known as a disease vector, of the organism causing yellow fever: a mosquito that bites a victim of the disease could subsequently bite and thereby infect a healthy person. He presented this theory at the 1881 International Sanitary Conference where it was not well-received, and in fact made him subject to ridicule and mockery.”
2. “A year later Finlay identified a mosquito of the genus Aedes as the organism transmitting yellow fever. His theory was followed by the recommendation to control the mosquito population as a way to control the spread of the disease.”
3. “Finlay went on to become the chief health officer of Cuba from 1902 to 1909.”
NB: “In the words of General Leonard Wood, a physician and U.S. military governor of Cuba in 1900: “The confirmation of Dr. Finlay’s doctrine is the greatest step forward made in medical science since Jenner’s discovery of the vaccination (for smallpox).”
WALTER REED (1851–1902) — “led the team that confirmed the theory of Cuban doctor Carlos Finlay”
1. “In 1896, Reed first distinguished himself as a medical investigator. He proved that yellow fever among enlisted men stationed near the Potomac River was not a result of drinking the river water. He showed officials that the enlisted men who got yellow fever had a habit of taking trails through the local swampy woods at night. Their fellow officers without yellow fever did not do so. Reed also proved that the local civilians drinking from the Potomac River had no relation to the incidence of the disease.”
2. “During Reed’s leadership of the U.S. Army Yellow Fever Commission in Cuba, the Board demonstrated that yellow fever was transmitted by mosquitoes and disproved the common belief that it was transmitted by fomites (clothing and bedding soiled by the body fluids and excrement of yellow fever victims).
3. “In recognition of his research, Reed received honorary degrees from Harvard and the University of Michigan.”
NB: The Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland is named after him.
WILLIAM C. GORGAS (1854–1920) Surgeon General of the US Army, 1914–1918
1. He is best known for his work in Florida, Havana and at the Panama Canal in abating the transmission of yellow fever and malaria by controlling the mosquitoes that carry these diseases.”
2. “At first, Finlay’s strategy was greeted with considerable skepticism and opposition to such hygiene measures. However, the measures Gorgas put into practice as the head of the Panama Canal Zone Sanitation Commission saved thousands of lives and contributed to the success of the canal’s construction.”
3. In 1918, he retired at the mandatory age of 64. He was given an honorary knighthood by George V in 1920 and a special funeral in St. Paul’s cathedral.
MAX THEILER (1899–1972) — Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1951 for his 1937 development of a vaccine against yellow fever
1. Born in Pretoria, South Africa, he was the first Africa-born Nobel Prize winner.
2. He moved to the US in 1922 to do research at the Harvard School of Tropical Medicine and moved to the Rockefeller Foundation in 1930.
3. “It took until 1937, and more than 100 subcultures in chicken embryos, for Theiler and his colleague Hugh Smith to obtain an attenuated strain, which they named “17D”. Animal tests showed the attenuated 17D mutant was safe and immunizing. Theiler’s team rapidly completed the development of a 17D vaccine, and the Rockefeller Foundation began human trials in South America. Between 1940 and 1947, the Rockefeller Foundation produced more than 28 million doses of the vaccine and finally ended yellow fever as a major disease.”
NB: A single dose gives lifelong immunity.
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
LAST FOUR YEARS OF POSTS ORGANIZED THEMATICALLY
ATTACHMENTS BELOW:
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
NB: Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic)
YOUR TURN
Please share the most interesting thing you learned in the last week related to health, health care or health care policy — the ethics, economics, politics, history….
Or the coolest, most important thing you learned in your life related to health are or health care policy that the rest of us may have missed.
Or just some random health-related fact that blew you away.
This is your chance to make someone’s day. Or to cement in your mind something really important you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than you otherwise would about something that matters.
