Before the 20th century, there was no definite information that mosquitoes had disease. American scientist Jesse William Lazear, who wanted to eliminate the doubts about this issue, made a great sacrifice by risking his life in his search for biomedical information.

Lazear allowed a mosquito to bite itself. In a few weeks, he lost his life by defeating yellow fever. However, this experiment has proved that mosquitoes carry the yellow fever virus and infect people.

History and Spreading of Yellow Humam

The yellow fever appeared in the rainforest of Africa and moved to America through European colonialism in the 16th century and translative slave trade. The disease has become a serious problem by spreading rapidly on the new continent. The effect of yellow fever for centuries was seen with different outbreaks. However, the US attention to the disease in a real sense of the disease, 1898 during the Spanish-American War, thousands of soldiers in Cuba lost their lives.

Cuban Doctor Carlos Finlay claimed that the yellow humma spread by mosquitoes and did not pass directly from person to person. However, this brave hypothesis was rejected by his colleagues at the 1881 International Health Conference and even ridiculed. At that time, scientists were inadequate to solve the spreading mechanism of the disease.

Scientific turning point

With the increase in mortality rates in Cuba, the US military Walter Reed, James Carroll, Jesse W. Lazear and Aristides Angramonte founded a research team. When no results were obtained from the experiments who tested the theory of contamination from human to person, Lazear began to work on the mosquito hypothesis. He used his own body as a subject to prove this theory.

Although Lazear lost his life after a while, his experiments revealed the fact that the yellow humma spread through mosquitoes around the world.