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By Root 451 0

Finlay’s delight, the Yellow Fever Board had paid him a visit to request samples of mosquito eggs. Finlay was now sixty-five years old, and he had been arguing his case for mosquitoes for twenty years. He took them into his library and pulled a few eggs from the glass edge of a bowl half full of water. Lazear listened intently as Finlay described the life cycle of this particular type of striped house mosquito, its peculiar aptitude for dwellings and fresh-water cisterns, its tendency to stay in a localized area rather than traveling great lengths, the female’s persistence in biting at all times of the day, its genius for adapting from its native forests to human habitats. Aedes aegypti was also a low flyer, drawn to the human scents of carbon dioxide and lactic acid that were heavier than the air and sank downward toward the exposed flesh of ankles and legs. Then, Finlay gave several dried eggs of that particular mosquito species to Lazear to raise for his own studies.

In addition to the stages of the mosquito’s development, there were anatomical details to track. Given Lazear’s methodical nature, the care of the “birds” was perfectly suited for him. As the eggs hatched, Lazear carefully labeled the glass tubes and shipped a few more of the mosquitoes to Dr. Leland Howard, an entomologist with the Department of Agriculture in the U.S. Sure enough, the samples proved to be the striped house mosquito so common in North America. As that generation of insects died, Lazear nurtured the eggs of the next. The most essential factor in rearing a batch of mosquitoes and producing new eggs is a fresh blood supply. The pregnant females need blood in order to lay eggs; and once hatched, the new generation relies on blood meals to thrive.

Las Animas Hospital housed an ample source of yellow fever patients. Lazear carried his fledgling mosquitoes in glass tubes plugged with cotton to the yellow fever ward. He removed the cotton and turned the tube upside down against a man’s arm or abdomen until the mosquito zigzagged its way downward, legs arched, and struck.

Though each of the members of the Yellow Fever Board had volunteered to self-infect, it turned out to be more complicated than that: Reed’s work in the U.S. had detained him longer than planned as he prepared his typhoid report, Cuban-born Agramonte was thought to be immune, and Carroll spent most of his time working at Camp Columbia. Only Lazear, who frequented Havana, was left to test the mosquito theory.

On August 11, Jesse Lazear took one of his carefully labeled yellow fever mosquitoes, flipped the tube upside down and waited as the insect landed and bit his forearm. When the mosquito seemed to have had her fill, Lazear tapped the glass, and she flew upward again. He marked it in his logbook. Contract surgeon Alva Sherman Pinto also volunteered to be bitten. Neither resulted in a case of yellow fever, though the mosquitoes had fed on infected patients and should have been carrying the virus in their wiry, winged bodies. Lazear’s notebook lists a number of other volunteers from Las Animas Hospital, none of whom developed yellow fever. The board became discouraged, especially Lazear, who was ready to “throw up the sponge.”

Then, the prey turned on the predator.

On August 23, Lazear sat down and wrote to his wife, who was now in the hospital on bed rest as she awaited the birth of their baby. In his letter, Lazear expressed his frustration with the fact that both Reed and Carroll seemed so preoccupied with the Sanarelli controversy: “Reed and Carroll have been at that for a long time and they have notions as to what we should do that I don’t agree with. They are not inclined to attempt as much as I would like to see done . . . I would rather try to find the germ without bothering about Sanarelli.”

In letters to both his mother and his wife, Lazear never mentions the experiments he conducted on himself. It may be that he did not want to worry them; two days later, he received word that his wife, Mabel, gave birth to a daughter named Margaret. He wrote to his mother, “The