|
.
|
U.S. Military History, Current Events and Veterans Issues
Where Duty, Honor and Country
are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
|
.
.
| Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should feel free to address their specific circumstances or whatever issues concern them in an atmosphere of peace, understanding, brotherhood and support. The FReeper Foxhole hopes to share with it's readers an open forum where we can learn about and discuss military history, military news and other topics of concern or interest to our readers be they Veteran's, Current Duty or anyone interested in what we have to offer. If the Foxhole makes someone appreciate, even a little, what others have sacrificed for us, then it has accomplished one of it's missions. We hope the Foxhole in some small way helps us to remember and honor those who came before us.
To read previous Foxhole threads or
to add the Foxhole to your sidebar,
click on the books below.
|
|
|
|
|
.
.
|
 
.
Major Walter Reed
(1851 - 1902)
.
|
On September 13, 1851, one of the world's outstanding physicians and medical research scientists was born in Belroi, Gloucester County, Virginia, the son of a Methodist minister, Lemuel Sutton Reed, and his wife, Pharaba White Reed. At an early age, Walter Reed gave "evidence of the intellectual brilliancy and earnestness of purpose which distinguished him in later years."
After his basic education at a private school in Charlottesville, Virginia, Walter Reed matriculated at the famed University of Virginia where he completed the two-year medical course in only one year and received his degree in 1869 at the age of eighteen. He was the youngest student ever to graduate from the medical school. Since the University of Virginia had no hospital attached, he took a second degree at Bellevue Medical College in New York in 1870. During the subsequent five years he served his internship at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn and at the Brooklyn City Hospital. While interning at Kings County he was described as being "sociable and companionable with a special gift for conversation." There too, he attracted the attention of Dir. Joseph P. Hutchinson, then the leading physician and surgeon in Brooklyn. After further internship at Brooklyn City Hospital with consultant status at Kings County, he was appointed one of the five inspectors on the Brooklyn Board of Health in 1873 at the age of twenty-two. He approached all his duties with enthusiasm and optimism, traits which contributed immeasurably to his success, both social and professional. The turmoil of city life excited and stimulated him. He attended concerts at the Hippodrome and the Academy of Music and good lectures on literature and scientific subjects. It was at this time that the young intern conducted his first research which was the basis of his first scholarly paper, published in 1892, called "The Contagiousness of Erysipelas."
Walter Reed 1876
In 1874, having served on the Boards of Health in Brooklyn and New York, he returned to Virginia to visit his father who was living in Murfreesboro. There he met his future wife, Emilie Lawrence, the daughter of a North Carolina planter. His letters to her revealed that he had decided to give up his civilian career and enter the Army as a surgeon. Because he felt the Army offered a good opportunity for research and also the financial security he felt he needed to marry his winsome fiancee, he applied and was accepted for an appointment in the Medical Department of the Army. He passed the required examinations and was appointed Assistant Surgeon with the rank of first lieutenant on June 26, 1875. So began an eighteen-year garrison life.
After five years at Fort Lowell and Fort Apache, Arizona, where he served as a beloved family doctor visiting patients in the wild country surrounding his posts, he was promoted to captain and soon thereafter was transferred to Fort McHenry in Baltimore. In this city he became a student of physiology at Johns Hopkins University in his spare time during 1881 and 1882.
After serving at Fort McHenry, Walter Reed was again assigned to southern and western posts at Fort Omaha, Nebraska, and Mount Vermon Barracks, Alabama. One Walter Reed historian points out that "one of the marvels of his life is that his relegation to frontier garrisons, unfavorable for intellectual contacts, did not ruin him."
Dr. Reed returned to Baltimore in 1890 as Attending Surgeon and examiner of recruits. This assignment was quite welcome since it provided him with the opportunity to do research. He became a student of bacteriology and pathology under the tutelage of Dr. William Henry Welch, head of the Pathological Laboratory at Johns Hopkins and foremost pathologist and medical bacteriologist in this country. These subjects were not taught as part of the medical curriculum of that day.
It is significant that Walter Reed's career coincided with the great flowering of medical science that took place in the 1880's. The germ theory of infectious disease was now accepted as postulated and proved by Pasteur, and Robert Koch had perfected a method for studying bacteria. In the United States George Miller Sternberg, later Army Surgeon General, with whom Walter Reed had a close professional relationship, was one of the founders of bacteriology.
George Miller Sternberg (1838-1915).
"America's first bacteriologist," Sternberg was Surgeon-General of the Army from 1893 to 1902 (Photo from frontispiece in Martha Sternberg, George Miller Sternberg: A Biography, Chicago: AMA, 1920).
The 1880's were critically important years in Walter Reed's life and in the destiny of the United States. It was during this period, all areas of the world were plagued by yellow fever, that the mature scientific investigator was formed. He conducted his own individual research much to the delight and satisfaction of Dr. Welch who had been one of Pasteur's students. His ties with Dr. Welch were strengthened, and Dr. Welch's mutually admiring relationship with Surgeon General Sternberg was quite advantageous to Dr. Reed as an Army surgeon protege.
Walter Reed, then forty-two years old, was greeted with enthusiasm by an eager group of researchers at the Pathological Laboratory. Captain Reed - promoted on June 26, 1880 - learned the necessary research techniques and was soon working on his own project concerning typhoid fever.
A man of sterling character, religious by nature, prepared for practice and research, a soldier who had learned to endure hardships, a student and pathologist of the highest caliber, Walter Reed was now ready for the great achievements of his lifetime. He would live for only fifty-one years, but between 1892 and 1901, a year before his death, he was engaged in some of the most important work in the history of medicine. This took the form of research into the etiology (cause) and epidemiology (spread) of typhoid and yellow fever.
The Dead Wagon, 2nd Division Hospital, Havana, ca. 1898 (Hench-Reed Collection, CMHSL, UVA)
From 1891 to 1893 Walter Reed spent his last western tour in the Dakotas. He was promoted to major in 1893 and then took his post as curator of the Army Medical Museum (now part of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology) and professor of clinical microscopy in the Army Medical School (now the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research) founded in Washington by Surgeon General Sternberg. At this same time he also held the chair in bacteriology at the Columbian University (now the George Washington University). He worked industriously for five years, teaching and working in his specialty, bacteriology. His work, clinical and academic, was accurate and original. His experience at work in the School gave him an excellent sense of judgement valuable for investigating the causes of epidemic diseases and in making sanitary inspections at military posts. He was indeed needed as an instructor; medicine was making rapid advances and military doctors had to be informed of the new techniques. An anti-toxin for diphtheria had been prepared and there was a race to find the specific agents (bacteria or viruses) responsible for communicable diseases. This was the beginning of medicine as we know it today, an era of great discovery. But the work of Koch and Pasteur were not well enough known; Major Reed, as a professor at the Army Medical School, served in a vital capacity teaching the new science of bacteriology. At the time of the Spanish American War, however, he was casting about for a position in the field which would allow him to put his knowledge of Army routines and sanitation to use for the benefit of soldiers in Cuba.
U.S. troops burying the dead, ca. 1898 (Photo by U. S. Army Signal Corps; print acquired by Philip S. Hench)
It was not until mid-August in 1898 when the war was already over that he had an opportunity to perform this valuable service. General Sternberg was then able to secure a board of officers headed by Major Reed to investigate the spread of typhoid fever. The Typhoid Board performed its greatest service through the discovery that this dread disease, prevalent at almost all U.S. Army encampments, was spread most commonly and disastrously by contact between persons and flies soiled with human excrement containing typhoid bacilli, by human carriers who shed bacilli by the billions, and by impure drinking water. This triumph for Army medicine demonstrated for the first time the effects of intestinal disease-producing agents (pathogens). It also pointed out the failure of out-dated diagnostic techniques. In some camps there were not even microscopes available for diagnostic purposes. The report of these findings passed with little notice, but it proved beyond all doubt that proper diagnosis required microscopic investigations and, in some cases, autopsies. Further, it served to dispel old notions that such diseases were caused by miasmas or foul emanations from swamps and rivers.
In May 1900 Major Reed was appointed president of a board whose purpose it was to study infectious diseases in Cuba paying particular attention to yellow fever. The other members of the board were Acting Assistant Surgeons Major James Carroll, Major Jesse W. Lazear and Major Aristides Agramonte of Havana. As a result of this Yellow fever Board, very few people living today have any knowledge of this dread disease.
James Carroll (1854-1907)
Yellow fever killed more men in the Spanish-American War than did the enemy. It appeared in Central America in 1596, probably imported from Africa by slave ships. It may have been the disease from which members of Columbus' second expedition suffered in 1495. Ninety epidemics struck the United States between 1596 and 1900. In 1793 an epidemic first hit Philadelphia, then the U.S. capital, causing the Government to flee as ten per cent of the population perished. Washington went to Mount Vernon while Jefferson fled the disorder caused by the onslaught of the disease. Because of frequent epidemics which destroyed ninety per cent of his expeditionary forces in 1802, Napoleon was influenced to sell the Louisianna Territory. It was chiefly because of "yellow jack," as the disease was nicknamed from the penant which was flown during quarantine, that the French were unable to complete the Panama Canal. The danger of contaminating the southern states was considered to be a major factor in the annexation of Cuba.
The onset of yellow fever came with chills and a headache. Then followed severe pains in the back, arms and legs accompanied by high fever and vomiting. The feverish stage might last hours, days, or weeks. Jaundice, from which the fever derives its name, might then appear. Then came the so-called "stage of calm" when the severity of the symptoms subsided and the fever dropped. In less serious cases this stage indicated recovery. But in the main, this stage was followed by a return of the fever accompanied by internal bleeding which caused the dreaded "black vomit" when blood released into the stomach was ejected.
Reed and Carroll had estimated that there were 300,000 cases in the United States between 1793 and 1900, which cost the nation almost $500,000,000 with a mortality rate usually at forty per cent but sometimes as high as eighty five per cent. The scourge of yellow fever had plagued the southeastern United States for two hundred years, but nowhere was it more prevalent than in Havana. Surgeon General George Miller Sternberg was this country's leading expert on yellow fever. Because neither he nor other researchers had been able to pinpoint the specific cause, he was astounded to hear the claim of Dr. Giuseppe Sanarelli, who in 1897 stated quite conclusively that the fever was caused by Bacillus icteroides.
|
|
|
|
|
