Zee Media Bureau
New Delhi: Google celebrates the 180th birth anniversary of Cuban physician and scientist Carlos Juan Finlay through a doodle on Tuesday. Google pays honour to the man who propounded the path-breaking theory that yellow fever was spread by mosquitoes.
In this featured doodle the mosquito represents the crux of his most important theory. It has Carlos Juan Finlay`s face amidst stagnant water, leaves and mosquitoes breeding on them. This doodle is a tribute to Carlos Juan Finlay’s theory and study which continues to save many lives today.
Born in 1833 in Puerto Príncipe, he was of French and Scottish descent. He studied at Jefferson medical college in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After graduating in 1855 he opened a medical practice.
In 1879, he was appointed by the Cuban government to work with a North American commission studying the causes of yellow fever.After two years, Carlos Juan Finlay was sent as the Cuban delegate to the fifth International Sanitary Conference in Washington DC.
At the conference, he urged those present to study yellow fever vectors. Finlay later theorised that the carrier of yellow fever was the mosquito Culex fasciatus,now known as Aedes aegypti .His hypothesis was confirmed by the board`s head, Dr Walter Reed of the US Army.
This discovery largely helped in starting the process to help the cause of eradication of yellow fever and saved many lives.
Finlay passed away at the age of 81 at his home in Havana, Cuba from a seizure induced stroke in August 1915.
