CARLOS J(UAN) FINLAY (1874)

Physician and epidemiologist who discovered that yellow fever is transmitted from infected to healthy human hosts by a mosquito.

Although he presented experimental evidence obtained from controlled infection of human volunteers by mosquito carriers in 1881 (published in 1886), his ideas were ignored for 20 years.

A graduate of Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia (1855) he returned to Cuba where he practiced in Matanzas and Havana.

In 1879 he was appointed by the Cuban government to work with the North American commission studying the causes of yellow fever and two years later he was chosen to attend the fith International Sanitary Conference in Washington as the Cuban delegate. At the conference Finlay urged study of yellow fever and soon afterward he stated that the carrier was the mosquito Culex fasciatus, later called Stegomyia fasciata, now known as Aëdes aegypti.

In 1900 the U.S. Army Yellow Fever Board headed by the physician Walter Reed arrived in Cuba and Finlay attempted to persuade Reed of his mosquito-vector theory. Although skeptical Reed decided to investigate the idea refining Finlay´s experimental procedures. Reed´s proof of mosquito transmission of yellow fever (1900) and William Gorgas eradication of the disease in Cuba and Panama followed.

Finlay was appointed chief sanitation officer of Cuba (1902-09) and after his death the Finlay Institute for Investigations in Tropical Medicine was created in his honour by the Cuban government.