The History of Public Entomology at the Connecticut Agricultural

The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station The History of Public Health Entomology at The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station 1904 –2009 JOHN F. ANDERSON, Ph.D. Distinguished Scientist Emeritus, Department of Entomology The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station The History of Public Health Entomology at The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station 1904 –2009 JOHN F. ANDERSON, Ph.D. Distinguished Scientist Emeritus, Department of Entomology Funded, in part, by The Experiment Station Associates Bulletin 1030 2010 Acknowledgments This publication is in response to citizen requests that I write an Experiment Station publication of my talk entitled, “104 Years of Public Health Entomology at The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station.” I gave this presentation in New Haven at an open house event in the spring of 2008. I express my sincere appreciation to Bonnie Hamid, who formatted the complex figures and the entire text and provided assistance with library searches and the writing. Vickie Bomba-Lewandoski assisted with acquiring some of the historical publications and scanning some of the photographs. Dr. Toby Anita Appel, John R. Bumstead Librarian for Medical History, and Florence Gillich, Historical Medical Library Assistant at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library, Yale University, assisted me with locating critical publications, as did Suzy Taraba, University Archivist and Head of Special Collections at Olin Library, Wesleyan University, and Professor Durland Fish, Yale University. James W. Campbell, Librarian and Curator of Manuscripts at the New Haven Museum sent me a copy of the New Haven Chronicle masthead (Figure 7). The extraordinary efforts of Mr. David Miles, photographer, Mr. Andrew Rogalski, Technical Services Librarian, and Terrie Wheeler, Chief Librarian, Gorgas Memorial Library, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, in providing the superb image of Dean Cornwell’s painting entitled “Conquerors of Yellow Fever” (Figure 12) are greatly appreciated. Edward D. Baker, Executive Director of the New London County Historical Society provided helpful information on early shipping into and out of New London. The catalogue of historic pictures of Experiment Station mosquito control efforts arranged by Rose Bonito was extraordinarily useful. Paul Capotosto and Roger Wolfe of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection were generous with their time and provided historical documents and photographs on mosquito control in Connecticut. I found the following two unpublished reports useful in compiling the history of events pertaining to mosquitoes and disease in Connecticut: Potter, L. 1980. Yellow fever in Middle Haddam, 1796. History 331, Wesleyan University, 30 pages; Wrenn, J. 2000. The history of Connecticut’s state mosquito control program. Practicum Project, University of Connecticut, MPH program, 23 pages. I owe a special thanks to Jane Bradley, Creative Advertising & Publishing Services, for her patience, yeoman effort, and artistic creativity in assembling this publication. Drs. Louis A. Magnarelli, Theodore G. Andreadis, Kirby C. Stafford III, and Andy J. Main made constructive comments of an early draft of this manuscript. Michael J. Misencik and Angela B. Bransfield provided needed assistance in preparing the text. Funding was provided in part by the United States Department of Agriculture Hatch Grant 344, the Experiment Station Associates, industry grant funds, and the William R. Lockwood Trust. 2 www.ct.gov/CAES THE CONNECTICUT AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION Contents Page Introduction 4 Yellow Fever and Malaria in Early Connecticut 6 Yellow fever 6 Malaria 8 The Golden Age of Discovery 9 Public Health Entomology at the Experiment Station 11 First publications on mosquitoes 11 MalariainGreenwich 12 Mosquito control from 1915 through 1939 13 Mosquito control, 1945 16 Mosquitoes, taxonomy, biology and ecology 16 Mosquitoes, biological control 18 Mosquitoes, arthropod-borne viruses (arboviruses) 20 Jamestown Canyon virus 21 La Crosse virus 22 Eastern equine encephalomyelitis 22 West Nile virus 23 Mosquitoes, dog heartworm 28 Horse flies and deer flies, biology and control 28 Culicoides (no-see-ums), phlebotomine sand flies, black flies, non-biting midges, and house and other muscoid flies 29 Bed bugs 30 Urticaria, myiasis, and caterpillar infestations in humans 31 Yellowjackets and wasps 32 Ticks, ecology and control 32 Ticks, identification and testing for Borrelia burgdorferi for citizens 35 Ticks, bacterial and protozoan pathogens 36 Rocky Mountain spotted fever 36 Human granulocytic anaplasmosis, human monocytic ehrlichiosis, and domestic animal ehrlichiosis 37 Human studies 37 Domestic animal studies 38 Wild animal studies 38 Babesiosis 39 Lyme Disease 40 Ecology and epidemiology of Lyme disease 41 Antibody studies of Borrelia burgdorferi and other bacteria in wild and domestic animals 44 Serologic tests for Borrelia burgdorferi in humans 46 Collaborative studies with other scientific institutions 47 Concluding Remarks 47 References 48 Credits 66 About the Author 68 THE CONNECTICUT AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION www.ct.gov/CAES 3 Introduction The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, hereafter referred to as the Experiment Station, was founded in 1875 for “the purpose of promoting agriculture by scientific investigation and experiment” as the Nation’s first state agricultural experiment station (Horsfall 1992). In that year, the Experiment Station’s first Director, Wilbur O. Atwater, hired a chemist and two assistants and established a chemistry laboratory in Judd Hall (Figure 1) at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. In October 1875, the Experiment Station began to analyze fertilizers to prevent fraud (Atwater 1904). Figure 1. Judd Hall, Wesleyan University, was completed in 1871. The focus on analyzing fertilizers continued after the Experiment Station relocated to Sheffield Hall (Figure 2) at Yale University in New Haven, Con- necticut in 1877 under Director Samuel W. Johnson, “the Nestor of agricultural chemistry in the United States” (Atwater 1904). The Board of Control was established by General Statute at that time, and the Ex- periment Station has continued to be governed by this eight-member citizen board to this day. The Experi- ment Station moved in 1882 to its current location on six acres of land on Suburban Street, which was later renamed Huntington Street, in New Haven (Figure 3). The Department of Biochemistry (now the Depart- ment of Biochemistry and Genetics) was established Figure 2. Sheffield Hall, Yale University, was in 1886, and the Department of Mycology (now the demolished in 1931. Department of Plant Pathology and Ecology) was created in 1888. Wilton E. Britton was hired in 1894 as a horticulturist. In 1901, the Connecticut General Assembly established the Office of State Entomologist at the Experiment Station. The Station’s Board of Con- trol appointed Britton as State Entomologist, and he established the Department of Entomology in 1901 (Turner 1974). The Department of Entomology was initially located on the second floor in Thaxter Building (Figure 4) and moved into an addition to Johnson Building in 1910 (Figure 5). Upon completion of the Jenkins Building in 1932, the Department relocated to the second floor and basement of the new Jenkins Build- ing, where it has been to the present day (Figure 6). Figure 3. Chemistry Building (l), built in 1882, is the The Experiment Station’s first document in public Experiment Station’s Osborne library. Eli Whitney Jr. health entomology was published on mosquitoes house (r) was built in 1859 and no longer exists. 4 www.ct.gov/CAES THE CONNECTICUT AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION (Britton and Viereck 1904). During the past 105 years, the Experiment Station has published hundreds of scientific papers or State reports on mosquitoes and other arthropods of public health importance. The part played by the Experiment Station in keeping citizens informed of the importance of biting arthropods and their control is a continuous, unfolding story of responding to important ento- mological and ecological problems affecting the health of people living in or visiting Connecticut. Our scientific findings not only benefit local citizens, but also they are of interest and benefit to scientists and others throughout the United States and beyond. Figure 4. Thaxter Building was built in 1889 and was demolished in 1959. Public health entomology at the Experiment Station began at a time when malaria was causing disease in Connecticut citizens and salt marsh mosquitoes were a scourge to residents and visitors of shore areas along Long Island Sound. It was also a time when epic medical discoveries had relatively recently docu- mented the importance of mosquitoes in transmitting the human pathogens causing malaria, filariasis, and yellow fever. The importance of controlling mosquitoes in terminating the epidemic of yellow fever and reducing the numbers of cases of malaria in Havana, Cuba, had been heralded throughout the country (Anonymous 1902, Gorgas 1904). Also, the control of salt marsh mosquitoes by ditching had begun in Figure 5. Johnson Building, completed in 1910. New Jersey (Smith 1902) and Long Island, New York (Britton and Viereck 1904). In Connecticut, an ex- tensive salt marsh in Stratford had been privately ditched for the control of mosquitoes as had salt marshes in the Indian Neck and Pine Orchard sec- tions of Branford, Fairfield, and fresh water sites in Hartford (Britton

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