Yellow fever James Carroll, Aristides Agramonte, and Jesse William Lazear. They successfully proved Finlay's ″mosquito hypothesis″. Yellow fever was the first virus shown to be transmitted by mosquitoes. The physician William Gorgas applied these insights and eradicated yellow fever from Havana. He also campaigned against yellow fever during the construction of the Panama Canal. A previous effort of canal building by the French had failed (in part due to mortality from the high incidence of yellow fever and malaria, which killed many workers). Although Dr. Walter Reed has received much of the credit in United States history books for "beating" yellow fever,
1793 Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic was also advocated by Dr. Edward Stevens, who in mid-September claimed it had cured Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury, of the fever. Rush searched the medical literature for other approaches. Benjamin Franklin had given him letters sent by Dr. John Mitchell, related to treating patients during a 1741 yellow fever outbreak in Virginia. (Franklin never published the letters.) Mitchell noted that the stomach and intestines filled with blood and that these organs had to be emptied at all costs. "On this account," Mitchell argued, "an ill-timed scrupulousness about the weakness of the body is of bad consequences in these