Yellow Fever

One night in a tent pitched about a mile from Quemados, Cuba, thirsty mosquitoes sang their monotonous whining song; on a cot, Private John R. Kissinger lay awake. It was hot and sticky; he did not slap the stinging pests away. He had volunteered to Dr. Walter Reed, head of the U. S. Yellow Fever Commission, to subject himself to the bites of mosquitoes that had sucked the blood of men ill with the fever; in this way the Commission hoped to find whether the mosquito carried the deadly germ.* He made the offer knowing that his chances for life were less than one in 20, if he became infected. That night was nearly 27 years ago. Last week scientists and doctors opened a campaign to raise money to help onetime Private Kissinger. Not long ago friends had found him nearly destitute, broken in body and mind from the illnesses that followed the yellow fever he caught that night near Quemados. For nearly 20 years, he has lain in a wheel-chair suffering from spinal myelitis. His wife has nursed him and supported him. But the U. S. has not been overgenerous with its rewards to the men who helped stamp out yellow fever. While one year of yellow fever was estimated to have cost the State of Louisiana alone 4,056 lives and $15,000,000, the total monthly disbursements of the U. S. in 1925 to the widows of Reed, Carroll and Lazear, and to John Kissinger was only $475 a month; in 1906 it gave only $146 a month.

For Mr. Kissinger, in particular, his country has done little. When he left the army in 1901, he proudly refused a reward for his sacrifice; in 1907 the Government awarded him a pitiful pension of $12 a month; in 1922 they increased it to $100. Now his faithful wife lies seriously ill, too; the pension is not large enough to keep them alive.

Yet Mr. Kissinger has lived to learn that his sacrifices have been worth while even if unrewarded. In 1900, yellow fever was the scourge of the American tropics; last year in the whole of North and South America, only two cases of yellow fever were reported.

* From his experiments, Dr. Reed found that the domestic mosquito (stegomyia fasciata) is the lone carrier of the yellow fever germ. The virus of the fever is a parasite that requires an alternate passage through a vertebrate and an insect host.