‘Yellow, yellow, dirty fellow’, says a primary school taunt. But when it
comes to Carlos Juan Finlay of Cuba, his friends must have had a different one -
‘yellow, yellow, dreaded fever’.
Today's Google doodle has Carlos Juan Finlay's face in a puddle of water, with lily leaves, and a mosquito on one of them. Carlos Finlay's initial hypothesis and preliminary investigations helped Walter Reed to ‘beat’ Yellow Fever, and made the construction of the Panama Canal by the US possible.
The leaves take the place of the two ‘G’s and the ‘E’ of the Google name, while the round ‘Gandhi glasses’ of Carlos Juan Finlay himself symbolise the 2 ‘O’s. The reflection of a lone palm takes the place of the ‘L’.
Carlos Finlay was the researcher who first theorised the role of ‘vectors’ in the spreading of the dreaded Yellow Fever disease, which killed thousands every year throughout South America, the Caribbean, Africa and the southern US.
US army's Yellow Fever Board lead by the US Army Doctor Major Walter Reed confirmed in 1901 that the carrier of Yellow Fever was the mosquito Culex fasciatus, later reclassified as Aedes aegypti.
This major breakthrough made it possible to control mosquitoes and the dreaded Yellow Fever, so that the US could undertake the construction of the Panama Canal between 1904-1914. The French abandoned their own attempt 20 years earlier because of the devastation caused by Yellow Fever on the labourers.
Today's Google doodle has Carlos Juan Finlay's face in a puddle of water, with lily leaves, and a mosquito on one of them. Carlos Finlay's initial hypothesis and preliminary investigations helped Walter Reed to ‘beat’ Yellow Fever, and made the construction of the Panama Canal by the US possible.
The leaves take the place of the two ‘G’s and the ‘E’ of the Google name, while the round ‘Gandhi glasses’ of Carlos Juan Finlay himself symbolise the 2 ‘O’s. The reflection of a lone palm takes the place of the ‘L’.
Carlos Finlay was the researcher who first theorised the role of ‘vectors’ in the spreading of the dreaded Yellow Fever disease, which killed thousands every year throughout South America, the Caribbean, Africa and the southern US.
US army's Yellow Fever Board lead by the US Army Doctor Major Walter Reed confirmed in 1901 that the carrier of Yellow Fever was the mosquito Culex fasciatus, later reclassified as Aedes aegypti.
This major breakthrough made it possible to control mosquitoes and the dreaded Yellow Fever, so that the US could undertake the construction of the Panama Canal between 1904-1914. The French abandoned their own attempt 20 years earlier because of the devastation caused by Yellow Fever on the labourers.
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