Drs. Reed and Carroll had proved that the bacillus icteroides of Sanarelli was identical with the hog-cholera bacillus. They made this demonstration while comparing the bacillus X of Sternberg with the bacillus icteroides of Sanarelli. The work was carried on by them during the years 1897 and 1898, at the laboratory of the Army Medical Museum in Washington. The investigation was undertaken at the request of General Sternberg.
In 1899 our Public Health Service published the report of a board of medical officers who had been sent to Havana to investigate Sanarelli’s organism. This report made a great impression. Surgeon-General Wyman, in his letter transmitting the report says:
The findings of this Commission, verifying the discovery made by Sanarelli, and making still further advances than did Sanarelli himself by determining the specificity of the bacillus icteroides, and that the primary infection of yellow fever is received through the respiratory tract, in other words, verifying one discovery and making others of almost equal importance, at the same time eliminating incorrect theories, must be considered a notable achievement in medical science and one of the greatest practical value to the people of the United States and other countries infected, or liable to be infected by yellow fever.
In view of the widespread interest which the report will excite and the practical deductions to be drawn therefrom, I have respectfully to request authority to have the same printed.
The findings of this Commission were:
First. That the microörganism discovered by Professor Giuseppi Sanarelli, of the University of Bologna, Italy, and by him named “bacillus icteroides” is the cause of yellow fever.
Second. That yellow fever is naturally infectious to certain animals, the degree varying with the species; that in some of the rodents local infection is very quickly followed by blood infection, and that, while in dogs and rabbits there is no evidence of this subsequent invasion of the blood, monkeys react to the infection the same as man.
Third. That infection takes place by way of the respiratory tract, the primary colonization in this tract giving rise to the earlier manifestations of the disease.
Fourth. That in many cases, probably a majority, the primary infection, or colonization, in the lungs is followed by a “secondary infection,” or a secondary colonization in the blood of the patient. This secondary infection may be complicated by the coinstantaneous passage of other organisms into the blood, or this complication may arise during the last hours of life.