Chapter 22

THE Missouri Botanical Garden has recently celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of its foundation and the New York Botanical Garden its twentieth anniversary. Within these short periods these gardens have taken rank among the leading scientific institutions of the world. Botanical gardens were among the first institutions to be established for scientific research; indeed Parkinson, the "botanist royal" of England, on the title page of his book of 1629, which we here reproduce, depicts the Garden of Eden as the first botanical garden and one which apparently engaged in scientific expeditions, for it includes plants which must have been collected in America. However this may be, publicly supported gardens for the cultivation of plants of economic and esthetic value existed in Egypt, Assyria, China and Mexico and beginning in the medieval period had a large development in Europe there being at the beginning of the seventeenth century botanical gardens devoted to research in Bologna, Montpellier, Leyden, Paris, Upsala and elsewhere. An interesting survey of the history of botanical gardens is given in a paper by Dr. A W. Hill assistant director of the Kew Gardens, prepared for the celebration of the Missouri Garden, from which we have taken the illustration from Parkinson and the pictures of Padua and Kew.

The papers presented at the celebration have been published in a handsome volume. It includes addresses by a number of distinguished botanists, though owing to the war several of the foreign botanists were unable to be present. Dr. George T. Moore, director of the garden, made in his address of welcome a brief statement in regard to its origin in the private garden and by the later endowment of Mr. Henry Shaw. Mr. Shaw came to this country from England in 1818, and with a small stock of hardware began business in one room which also served as bedroom and kitchen. Within twenty years he had acquired a fortune and retired from active business to devote the remaining forty-nine years of his life to travel and to the management of a garden surrounding his country-home on the outskirts of St. Louis. In 1859 he erected a small museum and library, and in 1866 Mr. James Gurney was brought to this country as head gardener. Mr. Shaw died in 1889, leaving his estate largely for the establishment of the Missouri Botanical Garden, but providing also for the Henry Shaw School of Botany of Washington University and a park for the city. With this liberal endowment constantly increasing as the real estate becomes more productive, Dr. William Trelease, the first director, and Dr. George T. Moore, the present director, have conducted an institution not only of value to the city of St. Louis but largely contributing to the advance of botanical science.

The New York Botanical Garden, largely through the efforts of Dr. N. L. Britton, the present director was authorized by the New York legislature in 1891. The act of incorporation provided that when the corporation created should have secured by subscription a sum not less than $250,000 the city was authorized to set aside for the garden as much as 250 acres from one of the public parks and to expend one half million dollars for the construction and equipment of the necessary buildings. The conditions were met in 1895, and the institution has since grown in its land, and its buildings, in its collections and in its herbaria, so that, in association with the department of botany of Columbia University, it now rivals in its material equipment and in the research work accomplished any botanical institution in the world.

THE SECOND PAN-AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC CONGRESS

THERE will be held at Washington from Monday, December 27, to Saturday, January 9, the second Pan-American Scientific Congress, authorized by the first congress held in Santiago, Chili, six years previously. This was one of the series of congresses previously conducted by the republics of Latin America. The Washington congress, which is under the auspices of the government of the United States, with Mr. William Phillips, third assistant secretary of state, as chairman of the executive committee, will meet in nine sections, which, with the chairmen, are as follows:

I. Anthropology, Wm. H. Holmes.

II. Astronomy, Meteorology, and Seismology, Robert S. Woodward.

III. Conservation of Natural Resources, Agriculture, Irrigation and Forestry, George M. Rommel.

IV. Education, P. P. Claxton.

V. Engineering, W. H. Bixby.

VI. International Law, Public Law, and Jurisprudence, James Brown Scott.

VII. Mining and Metallurgy, Economic Geology, and Applied Chemistry, Hennen Jennings.

VIII. Public Health and Medical Science, Wm. C. Gorgas.

IX. Transportation, Commerce, Finance, and Taxation, L. S. Rowe.

Each section is divided further into subsections, of which there are forty-five, each with a special committee and program. Several of the leading national associations of the United States, concerned with the investigation of subjects of pertinent interest to some of the sections of the congress, have received and accepted invitations from the executive committee of congress to meet in Washington at the same time and hold one or more joint sessions with a section or subsection of corresponding interest. Thus the nineteenth International Congress of Americanists will meet in Washington during the same week with the Pan-American Scientific Congress, and joint conferences will be held for the discussion of subjects of common interest to members of the two organizations

As an example of the wide scope of the congress we may quote the ten subsections into which the section of education is divided. Each of these subsections is under a committee of men distinguished in educational work and men of eminence have been invited to take part in the proceedings. The subjects proposed for discussion by each of these sections are:

Elementary Education: To what extent should elementary education be supported by local taxation, and to what extent by state taxation? What should be the determining factors in the distribution of support? Secondary Education: What should be the primary and what the secondary purpose of high school education? To what extent should courses of study in the high school be determined by the requirements for admission to college, and to what extent by the demands of industrial and civic life? University Education: Should universities and colleges supported by public funds be controlled by independent and autonomous powers, or should they be controlled directly by central state authority? Education of Women: To what extent is coeducation desirable in elementary schools, high schools, colleges and universities? Exchange of Professors and Students between Countries: To what extent is an exchange of students and professors between American republics desirable? What is the most effective basis for a system of exchange? What plans should be adopted in order to secure mutual recognition of technical and professional degrees by American Republics? Engineering Education: To what extent may college courses in engineering be profitably supplemented by practical work in the shop? To what extent may laboratory work in engineering be replaced through cooperation with industrial plants? Medical Education: What preparation should be required for admission to medical schools? What should he the minimum requirements for graduation? What portion of the faculty of a medical school should be required to give all their time to teaching and investigation? What instruction may best be given by physicians engaged in medical practice? Agricultural Education: What preparation should be required for admission to state and national colleges of agriculture? To what extent should the courses of study in the agricultural college be theoretical and general, and to what extent practical and specific? To what extent should the curriculum of any such college be determined by local conditions? Industrial Education: What should be the place of industrial education in the school system of the American republics? Should it be supported by public taxation? Should it be considered as a function of the public school system? Should it be given in a separate system under separate control? How and to what extent may industrial schools cooperate with employers of labor, Commercial Education: How can a nation prepare in the most effective manner its young men for a business career that is to be pursued at home or in a foreign country.

SCIENTIFIC ITEMS

WE record with regret the death at the age of ninety-two of Henri Fabre, the distinguished French entomologist and author; of William Henry Hoar Hudson, late professor of mathematics at King's College, London; of Dr. Ugo Schiff, professor of chemistry at Florence; of Susanna Phelps Gage, known for her work on comparative anatomy; of Charles Frederick Holder, the California naturalist, and of Dr. Austin Flint, a distinguished physician and alienist of New York City.

DR. RAY LYMAN WILBUR, professor of medicine, has been elected president of Leland Stanford Junior University. He will on January 1 succeed Dr John Caspar Branner, who undertook to accept the presidency for a limited period on the retirement of Dr. David Starr Jordan, now chancellor of the university. Dr. Wilbur graduated from the academic department of Stanford University in 1896.

AT the Manchester meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Sir Arthur J. Evans, F.R S., the archeologist, honorary keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, was elected president for next year's meeting, to be held at Newcastle-on-Tyne. The meeting of 1917 will be held at Bournemouth.

DR. MAX PLANCK, professor of physics at Berlin, and Professor Hugo von Seeliger, director of the Munich Observatory, have been made knights of the Prussian order pour le merite. Dr. Ramon y Cajal, professor of histology at Madrid, and Dr. C. J. Kapteyn, professor of astronomy at Groningen, have been appointed foreign knights of this order.

MR. JACOB H. SCHIFF, a member of the board of trustees of Barnard College and its first treasurer, has given $500,000 to the college for a woman's building. It will include a library and additional lecture halls as well as a gymnasium, a lunch room and rooms for students' organizations.

BY the will of the late Dr. Dudley P. Allen, formerly professor of surgery in the Western Reserve University, $200,000 has been set aside as a permanent endowment fund for the Cleveland Medical Library.

THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

DECEMBER, 1915

THE INSIDE HISTORY OF A GREAT MEDICAL DISCOVERY

BY ARISTIDES AGRAMONTE, M.D., Sc.D. (HON.)

UNIVERSITY OF HAVANA.

THE construction of the Panama Canal was made possible because it was shown that yellow fever, like malaria, could be spread only by the bites of infected mosquitoes.

The same discovery, which has been repeatedly referred to as the greatest medical achievement of the twentieth century, was the means of stamping out the dreaded scourge in Cuba, as well as in New Orleans, Rio de Janeiro, Vera Cruz, Colon, Panama and other Cities in America.

This article is intended to narrate the motives that led up to the investigation and also the manner in which the work was planned, executed and terminated. No names are withheld and the date of every important event is given, so that an interested reader may be enabled to follow closely upon the order of things as they occurred and thus form a correct idea of the importance of the undertaking, the risk entailed in its accomplishment and how evenly divided was the work among those who, in the faithful performance of their military duties, contributed so much for the benefit of mankind; the magnitude of their achievement is of such proportions, that it loses nothing of its greatness when we tear away the halo of apparent heroism that well-meaning but ignorant historians have thrown about some of the investigators.

The whole series of events, tragic, pathetic, comical and otherwise, took place upon a stage made particularly fit by nature and the surrounding circumstances.

Columbia Barracks, a military reservation, garrisoned by some fourteen hundred troops, distant about eight miles from the city of Havana, the latter, suffering at the time from an epidemic of yellow fever, which the application of all sanitary measures had failed to check or ameliorate and finally, our experimental camp (Camp Lazear), a few army tents, securely hidden from the road leading to Marianao, and safeguarded against intercourse with the outside world; the whole setting portentously silent and gloriously bright in the glow of tropical sunlight and the green of luxuriant vegetation.

Two members of a detachment of four medical officers of the United States Army, on the morning of August 31, 1900, were busily examining under microscopes several glass slides containing blood from a fellow officer who, since the day before, had shown symptoms of yellow fever; these men were Drs. Jesse W. Lazear and myself; our sick colleague was Dr. James Carroll, who presumably had been infected by one of our "experiment mosquitoes."

It is very difficult to describe the feelings which assailed us at that moment; a sense of exultation at our apparent success no doubt animated us; regret, because the results had evidently brought a dangerous illness upon our coworker and with it all associated a thrill of uncertainty for the reason of the yet insufficient testimony tending to prove the far-reaching truth which we then hardly dared to realize.

As the idea that Carroll's fever must have been caused by the mosquito that was applied to him four days before became fixed upon our minds, we decided to test it upon the first non-immune person who should offer himself to be bitten; this was of common occurrence and taken much as a joke among the soldiers about the military hospital. Barely fifteen minutes may have elapsed since we had come to this decision when, as Lazear stood at the door of the laboratory trying to "coax" a mosquito to pass from one test-tube into another, a soldier came walking by towards the hospital buildings; he saluted, as it is customary in the army upon meeting an officer, but, as Lazear had both hands engaged, he answered with a rather pleasant "Good morning." The man stopped upon coming abreast, curious no doubt to see the performance with the tubes, and after gazing for a minute or two at the insects he said: "You still fooling with mosquitoes, Doctor?" "Yes," returned Lazear, "will you take a bite?" "Sure I ain't scared of 'em," responded the man. When I heard this, I left the microscope and stepped to the door, where the short conversation had taken place; Lazear looked at me as though in consultation; I nodded assent, then turned to the soldier and asked him to come inside and bare his forearm. Upon a slip of paper I wrote his name while several mosquitoes took their fill; William E. Dean, American by birth, belonging to Troop B, Seventh Cavalry; he said that he had never been in the tropics before and had not left the military reservation for nearly two months. The conditions for a test case were quite ideal.

I must say we were in great trepidation at the time; and well might we have been, for Dean's was the first indubitable case of yellow fever about to be produced experimentally by the bite of purposely infected mosquitoes. Five days afterwards, when he came down with yellow fever and the diagnosis of his case was corroborated by Dr. Roger P. Ames, U. S. Army, then on duty at the hospital, we sent a cablegram to Major Walter Reed, chairman of the board, who a month before had been called to Washington upon another duty, apprising him of the fact that the theory of the transmission of yellow fever by mosquitoes, which at first was doubted so much and the transcendental importance of which we could then barely appreciate, had indeed been confirmed.

STATE OF THINGS BEFORE THE DISCOVERY OF MOSQUITO TRANSMISSION

Other infectious diseases, tuberculosis, for instance, may cause a greater death-rate and bring about more misery and distress, even to-day, than yellow fever has produced at any one time; but no disease, except possibly cholera or the plague, is so tragic in its development, so appalling in its action, so devastating in its results, nor does any other make greater havoc than yellow fever when it invades non-immune or susceptible communities.

For two centuries, at least, the disease has been known to exist endemically, that is, more or less continuously, in most of the Mexican Gulf ports, extending its ravages along the West India Islands and the cities of the Central and the South American coast.

In the United States it has made its appearance in epidemic form as far north as Portsmouth, N. H. At Philadelphia in 1793, more than ten per cent. of the entire population died of yellow fever. Other cities, like Charleston, S. C., suffered more than twenty epidemics in as many summers, during the eighteenth century. In the city of New Orleans, the epidemic which developed in the summer of 1853 caused more than 7,000 deaths. Later, in 1878, yellow fever invaded 132 towns in the United States, producing a loss of 15,932 lives out of a total number of cases which reached to more than 74,000: New Orleans alone suffered a mortality of 4,600 at that time. Recently (1905), this city withstood what is to be hoped shall prove its last invasion, which, thanks to the modern methods employed in its suppression, based upon the new mosquito doctrine, only destroyed about 3,000 lives.

It is by contemplating this awful record, and much more there is which for the sake of brevity I leave unstated, that one realizes the boon to mankind which the successful researches of the Army Board have proved. The work of prevention, the only one that may be considered effective when dealing with the epidemic diseases, was entirely misguided with regard to yellow fever until 1901: the sick were surrounded by precautions which were believed most useful in other infectious diseases, the attendants were often looked upon as pestilential, and so treated, in spite of the fact that evidence from the early history of the disease clearly pointed to the apparent harmlessness even of the patients themselves. All this notwithstanding, cases continued to develop, in the face of shotgun quarantine even, until the last non-immune inhabitant of the locality had been either cured or buried.

The mystery which accompanied the usual course of an epidemic, the poison creeping from house to house, along one side of a street, seldom, crossing the road, spreading sometimes around the whole block of houses before appearing in another neighborhood, unless distinctly carried there by a visitor to the infected zone who himself became stricken, all this series of peculiar circumstances was a never-ending source of discussion and investigation.

In the year 1900, Surgeon H. R. Carter, of the then Marine Hospital Service, published a very interesting paper calling attention to the interval of time which regularly occurred between the first case of yellow fever in a given community and those that subsequently followed; this was never less than two weeks, a period of incubation extending beyond that usually accorded to other acute infectious diseases. The accuracy of these observations has later been confirmed by the mosquito experiments hereinafter outlined.

FACTORS WHICH LED TO THE APPOINTMENT OF THE BOARD

One may well believe that such a scourge as yellow fever could not have been long neglected by medical investigators, and so we find that from the earliest days, when the germ-theory of disease took its proper place in modern science, a search for the causative agent of this infection was more or less actively instituted.

Men of the highest attainments in bacteriology engaged in numerous attempts to isolate the yellow fever microbe: unfortunately not a few charlatans took advantage of the dread and terror which the disease inspires, to proclaim their discoveries and their specific CURES; one of these obtained wealth and honor in one of the South American republics for presumably having discovered the "germ" and prepared a so-called vaccination which was expected to eradicate the disease from that country, but for many years after the foreign population continued to suffer as before and the intensity and the spread of yellow fever remained unabated, although thousands of "preventive inoculations" were made every month.

Geo. M. Sternberg in 1880, then an army surgeon, was directly instrumental in exposing the swindle that was being perpetrated, putting an end, after the most painstaking investigation, to all the claims to discovery of the "germ" of yellow fever that had been made by several medical men in Spanish America. The experience which he obtained during a scientific excursion through Mexico, Cuba and South America gave him a wonderful insight as to the difficulties one has to contend with in such work and made him realize the importance of special laboratory training for such undertaking. It is interesting to note that, as surgeon general of the U. S. Army, twenty years after, General Sternberg chose and appointed the men who constituted the yellow fever board, in Cuba.

The year before the Spanish-American war, an Italian savant, who had obtained a well-deserved reputation as bacteriologist while working in the Institute Pasteur of Paris, came out with the announcement from Montevideo, Uruguay, that he had actually discovered the much-sought-for cause of yellow fever; his descriptions of the methods employed, though not materially different from those followed by Sternberg many years before, bore the imprint of truth and his experimental inoculations had apparently been successful. Sanarelli--that is his name--for about two years was the "hero of the hour," yet his claims have been proved absolutely false.

The question of the identity of his "germ" was first taken up by the writer under instructions from General Sternberg: during the Santiago campaign I had opportunity to autopsy a considerable number of yellow fever cases and, following closely upon Sanarelli's directions, only three times out of ten could his bacillus be demonstrated; at almost the same time, Drs. Reed and Carroll, in Washington, were carrying out experiments which showed that Sanarelli's bacillus belonged to the hog-cholera group of bacteria and thus when found in yellow fever cadavers could play there only a secondary role as far as the infection is concerned.

Unfortunately, two investigators belonging to the U. S. Marine Hospital Service, Drs. Wasdin and Gleddings, were, according to their claims, corroborating Sanarelli's findings: there was nothing to do but that the investigation should continue, and so I was sent by General Sternberg to Havana in December, 1898, with instructions and power to do all that might be necessary to clear up the matter. Wasdin and Geddings had preceded me; the work carried us through the summer of 1899; we frequently investigated the same cases; I often autopsied bodies from which we took the same specimens and made the same cultures, in generally the same kind of media, and finally we rendered our reports to our respective departments, Wasdin and Geddings affirming that Sanarelli's bacillus was present in almost all the cases, while I denied that it had such specific character and showed its occurrence in cases not yellow fever. A virulent epidemic which raged in the city of Santiago and vicinity during 1899 afforded me abundant material for research.