plague. Lutz was the first Latin American scientist to study in depth and to confirm the mechanisms of transmission of yellow fever by the Aedes aegypti species of mosquitoes, its natural reservoir and vector, as they had been discovered a few years before, by American physician Walter Reed. Lutz was also responsible for the identification of South American blastomycosis, which received his name (Lutz-Splendore-de-Almeida disease). His dedication to public health was also paramount to the research and fight of several epidemics in many points in Brazil, such as cholera, bubonic plague, smallpox, typhoid fever, malaria, ankylostomiasis, schistosomiasis and leishmaniasis; which were then widely prevalent as tropical diseases in the state, due to the poor conditions of poverty, hygiene and ignorance about its transmission mechanisms. To this purpose, Lutz travelled widely across Brazil, visiting often the country's hinterland along the São Francisco River. Among his many accomplishments, Adolfo Lutz was also a pioneer researcher on medical entomology and the therapeutic properties of Brazilian plants (botany, ethnopharmacology and phytotherapy). As a zoologist, he described several new species of amphibians and insects such as Anopheles lutzii (an Anopheles mosquito). Adolfo Lutz is honored in the scientific names of two species of Brazilian amphibians and reptiles: Paratelmatobius lutzii, a frog; and Bothrops lutzi, a venomous snake. For his work on tropical diseases, Lutz received a nomination for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1938 See also Lutz-Jeanselme syndrome References External links Instituto Adolfo Lutz. Home page. Sabrosky's Family Group Names in Diptera References to Lutz work on Diptera. 1855 births 1940 deaths Brazilian people of Swiss-German descent Brazilian tropical physicians Brazilian entomologists People from Rio de Janeiro (city) University of Bern alumni 20th-century Brazilian physicians 19th-century Brazilian physicians