Aristídes Agramonte

Cuban-born physician and scientist

• Born: June 3, 1868
• Birthplace: Puerto Príncipe (now Camagüey), Cuba
• Died: August 17, 1931
• Place of death: New Orleans, Louisiana

As a pathologist and bacteriologist, Agramonte’s specialization in tropical medicine research led him to be one of four men appointed to the Yellow Fever Commission, where he confirmed that mosquitoes are the transmitting agents for the disease yellow fever.

Early Life

Aristídes Agramonte y Simoni (ahr-ee-STEE-days ah-grah-MOHN-tay ee see-MOHN-ee) emigrated to the United States from Cuba in 1870 at three years of age with his mother, Matilde Argilagos Simoni. His father, General Eduardo Agramonte Piña, was killed in the first Cuban war for independence. In addition to serving in the military, his father was a prominent physician.Agramonte earned his bachelor’s degree at the City College of New York and subsequently attended medical school at Columbia University. He graduated with honors from Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1892.

Life’s Work

Upon graduation from medical school, Agramonte remained in New York City, where he was hired as an assistant bacteriologist in the health department. In 1898 Agramonte was made acting assistant surgeon of the United States Army Medical Corps. The United States recently had taken control of Cuba, which had been liberated from Spain in the Spanish-American War. Agramonte was deployed to Santiago de Cuba in southeast Cuba to study a yellow fever outbreak in the U.S. Army. He was thought to be immune to the disease because of his assumed exposure as a child in Cuba. Prior research by Italian bacteriologist Giuseppe Sanarelli suggested the bacteriaBacillus icteroides caused yellow fever transmission. Agramonte performed autopsies on infected individuals in an attempt to verify that this bacterium was linked to yellow fever. In fact, Agramonte’s work disputed Sanarelli and found no evidence that Bacillus icteroides was the causative agent for yellow fever.

In 1900, Agramonte assumed leadership of the laboratory at Military Hospital Number One in Havana, Cuba. During the same year, U.S. Army Surgeon General George Sternberg enlisted Agramonte to again study the epidemic of yellow fever. Agramonte served as a pathologist on the Army’s Yellow Fever Commission, led by Walter Reed and including two other researchers, James Carroll and Jesse Lazear. They studied exposed volunteers for six months and confirmed the Aedes Aegypti mosquito transmitted yellow fever. This discovery led to control over the spread of the disease and dramatically reduced disease prevalence within one year.

Agramonte and his colleagues received a Congressional Gold Medal in 1929 for this work. Although there was considerable pressure for Agramonte to be a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Medicine for this discovery, it never came to fruition. Rather, Dr. Max Theiler won the prestigious award years later for his development of a yellow fever vaccine.

In addition to yellow fever, Agramonte studied other tropical diseases such as the plague, dengue, malaria, and typhoid fever. He became a professor of experimental pathology and bacteriology at the University of Havana, Cuba, in 1901. He returned to the United States shortly before his death to serve as professor of tropical medicine at the Louisiana University Medical School, New Orleans.

In 1901, Agramonte was elected as an honorary member of the American Society of Tropical Medicine, where he served as the society’s second vice president. In 1930, Agramonte was made an honorary fellow of the American Public Health Association. That same year, he published a book titled Looking Back on Cuban Sanitary Progress. Shortly before his death, Agramonte was elected president of the Pan-American Medical Congress.

Agramonte died at the age of sixty-three from cardiac complications. He was the last surviving member of the Yellow Fever Commission. In 1940, a Cuban park at the former site of the mosquito experiments, Camp Lazear, was created in honor of the men who worked on the commission and all volunteers from that time. A bronze medallion of Agramonte rests there in his honor.

Significance

The research of Agramonte and the entire Yellow Fever Commission now is considered inhumane but selfless, as the men exposed themselves and other volunteers to the disease and hazardous conditions. There now are scientific guidelines regarding the use of animal and human subjects in medical studies, especially in regard to informed consent. As a result of the commission’s research, a vaccine for yellow fever was created; the World Health Organization has promoted its use in routine childhood vaccination programs since 1988. Some have suggested that the irradiation of yellow fever in Cuba was the first great accomplishment in the field of public health. The elimination of yellow fever also is credited with facilitating progress in other important development projects; it was a precipitating event in allowing the creation of the Panama Canal.

Bibliography

A. G. N. “Aristídes Agramonte.” The Canadian Medical Association Journal 25, no. 4 (October, 1931): 460. Obituary that details the work of the Yellow Fever Commission and Agramontes contribution.

“Biography of Aristídes Agramonte.” Military Medicine 166, no. 9 Supplement. (September, 2001): 23. Brief story of Agramontes early years and career accomplishments, especially with regard to his work on yellow fever.

Petri, William A. “America in the World: 100 Years of Tropical Medicine and Hygeine.” American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 71, no. 1 (2004): 2-16. Describes the implications of the Yellow Fever Commission’s work. Article contains original study data, as well as the commission’s drawings and notes regarding their findings.

Reed, Walter, et al. “The Etiology of Yellow Fever: A Preliminary Note.” Public Health Papers and Reports 26 (1900): 37-53. Yellow Fever Commission’s initial conclusions and recommendations from their historic work on the disease.