The American Plague - Molly Caldwell Crosby [77]
Somewhere in the room, Lazear heard the wing beats of a mosquito, as many as 500 beats per second. It was a tinny whine in the stagnant hospital air. He saw the insect flickering like candlelight on the edge of his vision, and then he watched it light onto his arm, its legs crooked, and he felt a pinch. Lazear, who stalked, captured and kept mosquitoes with meticulous obsession, probably first thought to imprison the winged prey in one of his test tubes. But, he was still waiting for the other mosquito, confined beneath glass, to feed on the infected patient. If he moved now, the other one would surely refuse to finish.
Regardless of the many things that consumed his thoughts at that moment, the mosquito had its fill of blood and flitted away before Lazear could capture it for his collection. He had not even gotten a good look at this particular insect. It was probably one of the many malaria mosquitoes that hovered around the hospital for fresh supply.
At least that was the story he told his colleagues.
In his logbook, however, Lazear wrote an unusual entry on September 13. In all cases before that, page after page of records, Lazear had used the soldier’s name and simply the date he was bitten, with no other attention to the mosquito. A one-line entry with a name and date. On that day, however, in his elegant hand, Lazear did not write the soldier’s name, but instead wrote: “Guinea Pig No. 1.” He went on to write that this guinea pig had been bitten by a mosquito that developed from an egg laid by a mosquito that fed on a number of yellow fever cases: Suarez, Hernandez, De Long, Fernandez. It was a precise, detailed history that proved beyond doubt that the mosquito was loaded with the virus when it bit the healthy soldier. The guinea pig’s name was never used.
For the next few days, Lazear’s life continued much as it had over the last few months in Cuba. He fed and cared for the mosquitoes in the lab. He carefully documented in his logbook Carroll’s illness, as well as Dean’s, recording blood counts every day. He went sea bathing and ate in the officer’s mess hall; he read books by the light of a candle before bed.
Then, he began to lose his appetite. He skipped a few meals in the mess hall. He didn’t mention it to anyone, nor did he ask to see one of the yellow fever doctors; instead, he worked hard in the lab trying to ignore the oncoming headache.
On September 18, he complained of feeling “out of sorts” and stayed in his officer’s quarters. His head pounded, and Lazear decided to write a letter. Maybe occupying his thoughts with more cheerful things would take his mind off the pain. He wrote to his mother: “Dear little Houston must be very cute. How I wish I could see him . . . Mabel is probably with you now or at any rate will be by the time this reaches you. I wish I could be there too . . . Please don’t stop writing often because Mabel has come.” He made no mention of feeling ill, nor did he ever mention to his mother or Mabel that James Carroll had fallen ill with yellow fever. That night, Lazear started to feel chilled as the fever came on. He never went to sleep; he worked at his desk through the night, trying to get all the information about his mosquitoes organized. By morning, he showed all the signs of a severe attack of yellow fever. The camp doctors made the diagnosis, and Lazear agreed to go to the yellow fever ward. He asked Albert Truby to look after his belongings during his illness.
Lazear was carried by litter out of the two-room, white pine-board house in which he had lived since he and Mabel first arrived in Cuba. His clear blue eyes were alert as the soldiers held him, and he seemed to fully understand what was happening. The house was fumigated with sulfur dioxide, and Truby removed any valuables, including all books and photographs, as well as a small notebook he found in the blouse of Lazear’s army uniform.