For the quartering of this detachment, and of such non-immune individuals as should be received for experimentation, hospital tents, properly floored, were provided. These were placed at a distance of about twenty feet from each other, and were numbered 1 to 7 respectively.
Camp Lazear was established Nov. 20, 1900, and from this date was strictly quarantined, no one being permitted to leave or enter camp except the three immune members of the detachment and the members of the board. Supplies were drawn chiefly from Columbia Barracks, and for this purpose a conveyance under the control of an immune acting hospital steward, and having an immune driver, was used.
A few Spanish immigrants recently arrived at the port of Havana were received at Camp Lazear, from time to time, while these observations were being carried out. A non-immune person, having once left this camp, was not permitted to return to it under any circumstances whatever.
The temperature and pulse of all non-immune residents were carefully recorded three time a day. Under these circumstances any infected individual entering the camp could be promptly detected and removed. As a matter of fact, only two persons, not the subject of experimentation, developed any rise of temperature; one, a Spanish immigrant, with probable commencing pulmonary tuberculosis, who was discharged at the end of three days; and the other, a Spanish immigrant, who developed a temperature of 102.6° F. on the afternoon of his fourth day in camp. He was at once removed with his entire bedding and baggage and placed in the receiving ward at Columbia Barracks. His fever, which was marked by daily intermissions for three days, subsided upon the administration of cathartics and enemata. His attack was considered to be due to intestinal irritation. He was not permitted, however, to return to the camp.
No non-immune resident was subjected to inoculation who had not passed in this camp the full period of incubation of yellow fever, with one exception, to be hereinafter mentioned.
For the purpose of experimentation subjects were selected as follows: From Tent No. 2, 2 non-immunes, and from Tent No. 5, 3 non-immunes. Later, 1 nonimmune in Tent No. 6 was also designated for inoculation.
It should be borne in mind that at the time when these inoculations were begun, there were only 12 non-immune residents at Camp Lazear, and that 5 of these were selected for experiment, viz., 2 in Tent No. 2, and 3 in Tent No. 5. Of these we succeeded in infecting 4, viz., 1 in Tent No. 2 and 3 in Tent No. 5, each of whom developed an attack of yellow fever within the period of incubation of this disease. The one negative result, therefore, was in Case 2—Moran—inoculated with a mosquito on the fifteenth day after the insect had bitten a case of yellow fever on the third day. Since this mosquito failed to infect Case 4, three days after it had bitten Moran, it follows that the result could not have been otherwise than negative in the latter case. We now know, as the result of our observations, that in the case of an insect kept at room temperature during the cool weather of November, fifteen or even eighteen days would, in all probability, be too short a time to render it capable of producing the disease.
As bearing upon the source of infection, we invite attention to the period of time during which the subjects had been kept under rigid quarantine, prior to successful inoculation, which was as follows: Case 1, fifteen days; Case 3, nine days; Case 4, nineteen days; Case 5, twenty-one days. We further desire to emphasize the fact that this epidemic of yellow fever, which affected 33.33 per cent, of the non-immune residents of Camp Lazear, did not concern the 7 nonimmunes occupying Tents Nos. 1, 4, 6 and 7, hut was strictly limited to those individuals who had been bitten by contaminated mosquitoes.
