Sir, – The public health achievements of Dr Carlos Finlay were immense but he was not the first, in 1881, to suggest yellow fever was spread by mosquitoes, as Norman Freeman writes (An Irishman's Diary, May 29th).
In 1848, an Alabama physician, Dr Josiah Nott, suggested mosquitoes and other insects were the vector but he did not pursue the idea to proof.
Dr Nott lost four children to the dreaded disease, with his remaining sons dying in the American civil war. – Yours, etc,
Dr JOHN DOHERTY,
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Vienna.