YELLOW FEVER GERM

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 205, 24 May 1919, Page 8

YELLOW FEVER GERM

PROFESSOR NOGUC'M'S DISCOVERY

(London "Times" Akdieal Correspondent.) Attention lms boon so firmly fixed in these Inst months upon influenzr. ti nt an interesting event in the medical .world has more or. less escaped attention. I his is the description by Professor isoguclu 01 a, new germ 'in connection until yello.\ fever. That disease lias for long furnished a subject of discussion because doubt existed as to its exact causation, Irofessor ftoguchi states that the organism. (Rscovered by him belongs to the ela.-.-> known as spiroeliaqtes, of which the spiroehaete of syphilis and that of relapsing fever are oilier members. If the discovery is confirmed it will add another' link', to' the wonderful chain of discoveries forged in connection with this disease. The fever was first described in Barbados in 1647. Its dr'eadfuK virulence, soon, earned it its evil reputation, and this virulence became a matter of world-wida concern when in the. so-calleQ "great period" of the fever it visited Cadiz Tit" live epidemics, Malaga, Lisbon, Seville. Barcelona, Palrnn, Gibraltar, ami othor'SuropeanTowns. At Lisbon in ?557 some 6000 persons died in a few weeks. The fever remained iv mystery up till about ISBI, when Dr. Charles Finhy, of .Havana, propounded the idea that mosquitoes carried the infection. The view found small support at first, but later Kms's work on miliaria .reawakened in-n.'i-Mt in it. Thon came Hie Spanish-Ame-rican war and the appointment of a commission by the American Government to investigate Pinlay's theory. The workers nominated were Walter lteed, .lames Carmil, A. Agnimonte, mid Laz«i\ lhey began uy collecting the suspected mosquitoes, allowing them to feed on yellow fever "poTients, and then submitting them(icitves to the bites. 'Their labours were crowned with immediate success, though lives of great valuo woro heroically sacri[iced> It was proved that tho mosquito 'Slegomyia l'asciatn is the agent of infection, that the virus of the disease is present in the blood during the first days of infection, and that germ is so wnall that it can" pass through a cliainbcrland filter." Infection could not be produced till after several days from the time when the mosquito had bitten Ihe yellcrr fever paliant, so that it was evident that the germ underwent some change iu tlfo body of its insect host. This work furnished the material ol tliu wonuMful campaign by which Uorgas cleansed the I'linama Canal zone of yellow fever, and w> made possible tho completion of that work. , Kovgns earn to Panama from HtiYtuw, which lift hud hu>o cleansed of yellow lever in about a year, though the place was a famous hot-bed of tiie disease. J lis method was to attack tho mosquito in its brcediiiji-p acts ,u,d to exclude it: as far as possible ironi contact with l'eve.r cases. Professor Noguelns work on iilter-pas.)-jjiij germs '<s well known. It is al.-o well known tiiat from lime to ti'»® ' N ,u gestion lias been offered that tho spiroehaetes pass upugli.two stages of development, one of these «lngM being ol an GStrcmrily minuto type. Whether or not this viuw win receive confirmation through the new discovery rcinains-to be seen. 11l all mutters bacteriological it is ' to* keep opou mind until nl?=oiute Kind lias byen forthI coming.

The death has occurred nt Belfast of thn .Nov. I'rofowor Thomas Macnfee Hamill, D.D., mi ex-Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. He entered the ministry 40 years ago, and after working at Omngh and Lurgan was appointed in 1895 to the chair of Systematic Theology at the Assembly's Col lege, Belfast. In 1915 he was cleeted Moderator of the Assembly, a«i fur mn/iy years lie had acted as convener of 'the' Assembly's Colonial Mkiion and nne of the secretaries uf the Sabbath School Society for Ireland.

As a. tliankoileriiiß for their golden wedding, Mr. and Mrs. H. S. Joel, of Gravpsend, have presented to the local almshouse.