of the Society of American Bacteriologists, 31 December 1901 and 1 January 1902. Thus, clinical virology can be said to have started in the first years of the 20th century.
Presciently, they noted that the most effective means of controlling the spread of yellow fever was through destruction of mosquito breeding areas and prevention of mosquitoes biting the sick (31). This strategy was employed with extraordinary success by William Crawford Gorgas of the U.S. Army, also present in Havana at that time. A brilliant story unto himself, Gorgas cleared Havana of yellow fever. An interesting connection can be noted here between Gorgas and J. C. Nott, mentioned above, who had suggested that yellow fever transmission required an intermediate host. Nott, coincidentally, was the doctor who delivered the infant Gorgas, whose success in the story of yellow fever eradication was based on Nott’s theory. A few years later, Gorgas also cleared the Canal Zone of yellow fever and malaria, allowing the successful construction of the Panama Canal (17, 18, 25). Thus, the yellow fever-mosquito story was intimately wound into America’s expanding international role (26).
It was clear from the classic studies of the Yellow Fever Commission that transmission experiments had to be performed in human subjects. However, that presented significant ethical issues, not only for potentially lethal viral infections such as yellow fever but also for permanently disabling anterior poliomyelitis.
Although Carroll reported in 1904 that others had also shown that the agent of yellow fever was filterable (7), attempts to identify a bacterial cause continued (2). It was not until a successful experimental animal host, the rhesus monkey, was demonstrated in 1928 (37) and then the successful use of intracerebral inoculation of white mice (38, 39) that large-scale studies of the yellow fever virus could be undertaken and the bacterial candidates dismissed.
References
1 Ackerknecht, E. H. 1948. Anticontagionism between 1821 and 1867. Bull. Hist. Med. 22:562–593.
2 Agramonte, A. 1928. A review of research in yellow fever. Ann. Intern. Med. 2:138–154.
3 Beijerinck, M. W. 1942. Concerning a contagium vivum fluidum as cause of the spot disease of tobacco leaves, 1898, with 2 plates, p. 33–52. In J. Johnson (ed. and translator), Phytopathological Classics, No. 7. American Phytopathological Society, St. Paul, MN.
4 Bradbury, S. 1967. The Evolution of the Microscope. Pergamon, Oxford, United Kingdom.
5 Brock, T. D. 1999. Robert Koch: a Life in Medicine and Bacteriology. American Society for Microbiology, Washington, DC.
6 Carey, M. 1959. Yellow fever, p. 114–118. In R. H. Major (ed.), Classic Descriptions of Disease with Biographical Sketches of the Authors, 3rd ed. Charles C Thomas, Springfield, IL.
7 Carroll, J. 1904. A brief review of the etiology of yellow fever. N.Y. Med. J. and Philadelphia Med. J. 79:241–245, 302–310.
8 Carter, H. R. 1898. Communication with a town infected with yellow fever. Med. News 72:546–547.
9 Carter, H. R. 1900. A note on the interval between infecting and secondary cases of yellow fever from the records of the yellow fever at Orwood and Taylor, Miss., in 1898. New Orleans Med. Surg. J. 52:617–636.
10 Carter, K. C. 1985. Koch’s postulates in relation to the work of Jacob Henle and Edwin Klebs. Med. Hist. 29:353–374.
11 Clendening, L. 1960. Source Book of Medical History, p. 110–121. Dover Publications, New York, NY.
12 Dubos, R. J. 1950. Louis Pasteur: Free Lance of Science. Little, Brown, Boston, MA.
13 Duffy, J. 1953. Epidemics in Colonial America. Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, LA.
14 Finlay, C. 1886. Yellow fever: its transmission by means of the culex mosquito. Am. J. Med. Sci. 92:395–409.
15 Garrison, F. H. 1960. An Introduction to the History of Medicine, 4th ed. W. B. Saunders Co., Philadelphia, PA.
16 Gest, H. 2007. Fresh views of 17th century discoveries by Hooke and van Leeuwenhoek. Microbe 2:483–488.
17 Gibson, J. M. 1950. Physician to the World: the Life of General William C. Gorgas. The University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, AL.
18 Gorgas, W. C. 1909. Sanitation of the tropics with special reference to malaria and yellow fever. JAMA 52:1075–1077.
19 Hemmeter, J. C. 1927. Master Minds in Medicine, p. 297–336. Medical Life Press, New York, NY.
20 Ivanowski, D. 1942. Concerning the mosaic disease of the tobacco plant, 1892, p. 25–30. In J. Johnson (ed. and translator), Phytopathological Classics, No. 7. American Phytopathological Society, St. Paul, MN.
21 Kelly, H. A. 1923. Walter Reed and Yellow Fever. Norman, Remington, Baltimore, MD.
22 Lister, J. 1867. On a new method to treat compound fracture,
