to appoint a commission to investigate the cause of the disease. “Known officially as the United States Army Yellow Fever Commission, it was known simply as the Reed Commission for Major Reed, who was the chairman of the four-man body that included three other specialists in infectious disease: James Carroll, Aristides Agramonte, and Jesse W. Lazear, all of whom were contract doctors for the Army.”[16] Carlos Finlay was a Cuban epidemiologist who had made many strides of discovering the origin of yellow fever in Cuba. The United States sought out Finlay

“The first methodical and scientific approach to the study of the mode of transmission of yellow fever was undertaken by Finlay after he had returned to Cuba. In a review article on yellow fever published in 1895, Finlay recalled that, in December 1880, a comparison of certain characteristics of yellow fever transmission with those needed for mosquito activity – such as the absence of both above a certain altitude and at low temperatures – led him to deduce that yellow fever could not be acquired by inhalation, ingestion or contact. He postulated that the mode of transmission might be by inoculation of disease germs by some piercing insect (algun insect puzzante) peculiar to yellow fever countries” (Clements, Harbach, 2017). By the 1900s, the Commission proved that yellow fever was not caused by person to person contact or poor sanitation but by female Aedes Aegypti mosquitoes which carried the virus person to person.

James Carroll, who also served on the yellow fever commission board argued the mosquito theory and proposed that volunteers must be exposed to the mosquitoes to prove the contraction. Carroll and Jesse William Lazear, another commission members, subjected themselves to the bite of the infected mosquitoes to test the theory proposed. Unfortunately, Lazear died but Carroll recovered and was able to finish a series of experiments. “They made a convincing demonstration of yellow fever transmission to human volunteers by the bite of infected Aedes aegypti. The control of the demonstrated vector brought yellow fever under control in the major port cities of the Old World and New World.It was thought, in the early decades of the twentieth century, that the disease could be vanquished” (Downs, 1982).

“Dr. Finlay, a Cuban who had been a member of the auxiliary Yellow Fever Commission, unfortunately made his demonstration in an era when many erroneous theories were strongly entrenched, and for years he was called the ‘mosquito maniac.’ During those years Matas alone supported Finaly’s hypothesis-which, of course