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Dr. Walter Reed, a native son of Gloucester County, Virginia, became a national hero at a time when memories of the Civil War were fresh in the minds of many living in the American South. The son of a Methodist minister, he became a United States Army officer about a decade after the conflict that had maimed his older brother for life. Reed's conception of our nation embraced both the western and northern regions of our country and was perhaps similar to the notion of imperial destiny that Theodore Roosevelt espoused. Walter Reed's service at desolate Army outposts in hostile Indian territory included tours of duty not only in the Apache country of Arizona, but in the Sioux territory of the Dakotas where he treated survivors of the massacre at Wounded Knee. This was an age when Native Americans were often hated by their white countrymen. Reed fought for the improvement of reservation conditions in an era when these settlements were administered as death camps. Reed and his wife adopted an Indian child, a little girl. Reed's gallantry was further proven near the end of his career by his willingness to include himself among the other human subjects infected with yellow fever in a test done in order to establish the disease's cause and stages. It is an accident of history that Reed was temporarily called back from Cuba to Washington in order to report on typhoid fever and was spared the ordeal of serving as a test subject. The other test subjects were men half his own age and better able to withstand the ensuing illness. One died. Reed survived and lived to record his findings that proved that yellow fever, much like malaria was transmitted by mosquitoes. This research, done in Cuba not long after the end of the Spanish-American War, helped physicians to understand and control the disease during a period when American troops were stationed in Cuba and was important later in the effort to construct the Panama Canal. Reed practiced medicine at a time when the microscope was becoming an important tool of medical research and he was fascinated by the study of microorganisms. Due to the fact that Walter Reed is popularly honored for his research of yellow fever it is often overlooked that he worked as part of a team that studied typhoid fever. His commitment to the ideal of scientific progress for the improvement of human life might strike the contemporary reader as an archaic ethic. One wonders what Walter Reed would have thought of a century in which medical science has become an instrument of death and suffering. Walter Reed's character was that of a courageous visionary whose strong sense of personal discipline required that he think and act in a humane manner in accordance with the Christian tradition. His compassion was an essential feature of the career ethic he dedicated his life to and a concern for a patient's well being was essential to the performance of his duty as he understood it. His sense of personal discipline created within him a perspective that would coolly appraise or even disregard personal danger while fostering within him a desire to serve his fellow human beings.
Born at the small country crossroads village of Belroi in Gloucester
County, Virginia on September 13, 1851, Walter Reed was the fifth and last
child born to Pharaba White Reed and her husband, Lemuel. The family home
at Belroi is maintained today by the Association for the Preservation of
Virginia Antiquities as a museum and contains many fascinating items from
that time. Gloucester County honors Reed's memory
Lemuel Sutton Reed was a Methodist minister and his ministry took the family to a number of postings in Virginia and North Carolina. The Reeds resided in a number of small towns such as Gatesville, Murfreesboro and Farmville. Bailey's article in the Virginia Cavalcade describes Walter as an ordinary child whose behavior gave no hint of future greatness. "At Farmville, where his father served neighboring churches, six-year-old Walter began his education in a one-room school kept by a Mrs. Booker. The child's appearance was very attractive, and his manners were noticeably gracious. A typical boy, he loved to roam the banks of the Appomattox and to watch the ox carts bringing in tobacco to the warehouses. Nothing about him would have led an observer to believe that this lad's name would be chronicled with those of Lister and Pasteur. He gave not the slightest indication of any interest in science." Walter's older brothers Tom and James both fought for the Confederacy and James, a Sergeant, lost a hand at the battle of Antietam but continued in active military duty. Dr. William Bean, a man awarded the status of professor emeritus at the University of Iowa's College of Medicine, studied the career of Walter Reed for many years and wrote what is considered to be the most authoritative biography of Reed's life. Like Reed, Bean took his MD degree at the University of Virginia and went on to serve in the Army Medical Corps. Bean saw action in the Pacific theater during the Second World War, according to the obituary recording his death in 1989 written by Alfred Soffer for the Journal of the American Medical Association. Bean's biography of Walter Reed was published in 1982. In this work Bean records something of the widespread anguish and suffering the war brought to many Virginians by quoting from a diary kept by Walter's brother, James. The personal pain and heartbreak revealed in the following passage might, in the reader's mind, be multiplied by the untold thousands of households experiencing similar tragic circumstances at the war's end. "When I arrived home my father said to me: 'well, my son, it is all over now.' But I replied, 'No, sir: we will rest up awhile and then we will . . . lick them out of their boots.' But Alas! We never did." Bean also records that during 1864 while the Reed family resided at Lawrenceville, Walter and Christopher Reed attempted to hide their family's horses from the marauding cavalry of Union General Phil Sheridan. The boys were captured then released by the Federal troopers. At the war's end Lemuel Reed obtained a posting at Charlottesville, Virginia, in order that his sons might have the opportunity to attend the university in that town. Howard Kelly's scholarly biography of Walter Reed was first copyrighted in 1906, only four years after the death of its subject. This entertaining work presents the life of a man as seen by a contemporary, a writer assessing a public figure by the contemporary standards of the time. Kelly's conversational narrative style seems casual in comparison with the intensely researched writing of Bean the historian. Kelly comments with admiration that Walter Reed was exceptionally young at the time he was admitted to the University's medical program. Kelly quotes a letter sent to him by Dr. A. R. Buckmaster, professor of obstetrics and practical medicine at the University of Virginia. The letter indicates Walter Reed's exceptional academic ability and strength of character, Personality traits that would enable him to complete his course of study at the university in half the time taken by most students. Buckmaster's letter, cited by Kelly, reads as follows. "Walter Reed was at the University of Virginia two sessions. In 1867 he took Latin, Greek, English literature, and another study in the academic department. In 1868 he studied medicine and was graduated after one year's work. This in itself shows that he was an unusual man…The standard was very high and no man could have reached it unless he were a very clever student…in earning his degree he proved himself above the average." Bean comments about the intellectual climate at the University during these post-war years. "The faculty included such distinguished men as Basil Guildersleeve, the Greek professor who was to leave later for the new Johns Hopkins University: William McGuffey, the Presbyterian minister from Cincinnati who taught Moral Philosophy and wrote McGuffey's Reader; and William Wertenbacker, the librarian, who had known Mr. Jefferson well and who allowed Walter to use an alcove as a study." In addition to attending lectures medical students were expected to familiarize themselves with the human anatomy by dissecting the corpses of criminals and paupers. The school also sponsored a small outpatient teaching clinic. Reed graduated third in his class and then traveled to New York where he continued his medical studies at Bellevue Hospital Medical College. Myra Gregory Knight echoes Bean's assessment of conditions at Bellevue Hospital in her review of Bean's biography of Walter Reed. Bellevue is described as being at that time, "the world's biggest, bloodiest and busiest hospital." Reed later worked at several hospitals located in Brooklyn. Biographers agree that Reed was astonished by the unsanitary conditions he encountered in the urban tenement slum districts of the city and saddened by the human misery these unhealthy conditions created. Nina Page, an APVA volunteer working at the Walter Reed birthplace in Gloucester County, has written an unpublished paper about four pages long that summarizes material first presented in an article written for Stripe, a publication intended for patients and staff at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. Mrs. Page has served as Secretary for the Joseph Bryan Branch of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities. This local chapter opens the Walter Reed home at Belroi each year on the Sunday closest to the anniversary of Reed's birthday, September 13th. Mrs. Page prepared her manuscript for use by the volunteer tour guides working at the house. Mrs. Page indicates that in 1874 Reed traveled south to visit his parents during which time he met his future wife, Emilie Lawrence of Murfreesboro, North Carolina. Mrs. Page notes, "In letters to her, he disclosed his intention to give up private practice and to apply for a commission as a medical officer in the Army where he reasoned that he would have a greater opportunity for research and more financial security. Walter and Emilie were married April 25th, 1875, in Murfreesboro."
After passing the required medical exams, Walter Reed was appointed
an assistant surgeon in the United States Army on June 26th,
1875. His rank was that of first lieutenant. Lt. Reed spent the next
five years in service at Ft. Lowell and Ft. Apache, Army posts located in
Arizona. Reed's wife joined him at San Francisco in order to accompany
him and make their home in what were often difficult surroundings. Bean
comments, "Emilie's girlhood had been comfortable and sheltered. It was
undoubtedly the most courageous act of her life when she took off from
Virginia for San Francisco, surviving some kind of train wreck en route.
It may
Many people of that era might perceive of the conditions in the far west of the North American continent to be hellish due to the trackless immensity of the hot dusty desert landscape. Temperatures at Camp Lowell near Tucson were reported at 115 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade. Mrs. Page writes that a son named Walter Lawrence Reed was born at Ft. Apache on December 4th, 1877. Reed was promoted to the rank of captain in 1880. Not long afterwards Reed was temporarily transferred to Ft. McHenry in Baltimore and then posted to Ft. Omaha, Nebraska. A daughter named Emilie Lawrence Reed was born at Ft. Omaha on July 12th, 1883. In October of that same year Walter Reed would assume duties as director of a military hospital located at Ft. Sidney, one of four military posts that had been established mainly to protect construction crews building the Union Pacific Railroad across the Great Plains in the late 1860's. Gordon Stelling Chappell describes the fort as it appeared during Walter Reed's time of service there in an article published about twenty-five years ago in the quarterly journal of the Nebraska State Historical Society. "The military post in the trans-Mississippi West bore little similarity to the stockaded forts protected by blockhouses portrayed in James Fenimore Cooper's fiction and the writings of Francis Parkman about a now long-past woodland frontier. Fort Sidney was typical among trans-Mississippi garrisons, consisting of a scattering of buildings set out on the prairie without semblance of fortified protection other than an ornamental picket fence. The central feature of the post was a vast parade ground which the principal structures faced. Officers' quarters, which looked like ordinary Victorian civilian houses except that they were all alike, were on the west side. Facing them from across the parade were quartermaster and commissary storehouses and offices and the hospital. An infantry barracks stood on the north side, and on the south was a cavalry barracks, with laundresses' quarters (for married enlisted men whose wives were laundresses) behind it. Behind these were the stables and blacksmith shop on the slope leading down to Lodgepole Creek. The buildings of the time were either of frame or 'concrete' (lime-grout) construction." Chappell's article includes a schematic diagram or plan of Fort Sidney dated 1871 that indicates the locations of several other important buildings such as the magazine, the guard house, a bakery, a carpenter's shop, an ice house, and a coal house, as well as a well. Chappell notes the grim conditions faced by Dr. Reed at Fort Sidney. Three years prior to Reed's posting, Lieutenant Colonel John Edward Summers, medical director of the Department of the Platte, had visited Ft. Sidney and written a report which stated that, ". . . the Hospital is shabbily constructed and very far from that which it was believed and hoped it would be." Chappell provides some insight into Walter Reed's initial reactions to conditions at Ft. Sidney. "Upon taking charge of medical affairs at Fort Sidney," Reed wrote in that official, calf-bound volume known as the Record of Medical History of Post, "I find the ward rather full of 'ugly' cases." Reed encountered numerous cases of typhoid fever at this isolated military outpost. In 1890 Dr. Reed was assigned to Baltimore where he was given the duty of examining new recruits. While in Baltimore Dr. Reed studied bacteriology at the new Johns Hopkins Hospital. After completing studies at Johns Hopkins, Reed relocated his family to Washington, D.C. where he taught at the Army Medical School and served as curator of its museum. Bean writes, "He was forty-two when he became a professor, and had previously had no formal teaching experience. He was beginning to know for the first time the stimulation and excitement of kindling the minds of other men. It was a challenge to explore a complicated new subject, but it was equally a challenge to keep the attention of physicians--some of whom were present because of the army's orders rather than any interest of their own." Bean quotes from a letter written by one of Reed's students. "His lectures, beside satisfying the zealous seeker for knowledge, were spiced with humor . . . which made the relations between him and his students a freer and more sympathetic one. His language was always interesting . . . When he was at his best, his voice would reach a high falsetto note . . . due to his characteristic method of impressing important facts upon dull or indurate intellects. His students never feared him, but from the start regarded him with filial affection . . . He was constantly at the side of his pupils in the laboratory, advising, encouraging, counseling and, above all, instructing." It was at Johns Hopkins that Reed would first encounter James Carroll, an English workingman employed as a hospital steward. Carroll emigrated to America in 1874 and enlisted in the Army. As a sergeant serving at posts located in Minnesota and in Dakota Territory, Carroll decided to pursue a career in medicine. He attended medical lectures in St. Paul, Minnesota, and later at the City University of New York. He took his medical degree from the University of Maryland. For much of their professional lives Carroll was of great service to Reed, but Bean remarks that later in life and after Reed's death, Carroll would suffer from envy, feeling that he never received the credit that was rightfully due him for his part in Reed's medical research. From 1891 to 1893 Reed was posted in the Dakotas. Dr. Bean's biography of Reed devotes some pages in describing this bleak period in Walter Reed's career. Yet it was in these primitive and often filthy conditions of frontier post life that Dr. Reed became the public health advocate of sanitary measures as a means of preventing infectious disease. Reed was promoted to the rank of major in 1893 and reassigned back east to Washington, D.C., where he served as curator of the Army Medical Museum (now part of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology) and taught the subject of Clinical Microscopy at the Army Medical School (now known as the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research). Mrs. Page reports that Major Reed held a chair in bacteriology at the Columbian University, now known as George Washington University. Mrs. Page indicates the great number of papers published by Reed at this time concerning his original research. "Between 1892 and 1902 Reed published 27 papers on original work, encompassing a wide variety of subjects including; cholera, erysipelas, leukemia, malaria, pneumonia, typhoid, vaccinations and yellow fever." Walter Reed was appointed as head of a board of medical officers investigating the spread of typhoid fever at a number of U.S. Army encampments in mid-August of 1898, just after the Spanish-American War. This board's findings indicated that the disease was spread to humans by flies that had contacted the bacilli in human excrement. Impure drinking water contaminated with these same bacilli was seen as another means by which the malady was spread. The success of this investigation brought about Dr. Reed's appointment in May of 1900 as director to a similar board of medical officers investigating the cause of yellow fever, another disease that plagued American Army bases, especially in tropical regions. James V. Writer, a free-lance author from Silver Spring, Maryland, writes about the disease in an article he wrote about Walter Reed for American History. "People called it yellow jack, for the flag raised by ships to warn that there was yellow fever aboard, and during the nineteenth century, it was 'simply the single most dreaded disease in the Americas.' In the United States, yellow fever came in the spring or summer and stayed until the first frost. Devastating yellow fever epidemics swept through many of America's Southern and East Coast port cities during the nation's early history. In the years between 1702 and 1800, the fever appeared roughly 35 times, with an epidemic in Philadelphia killing more than four thousand in 1793. An estimated half-million Americans contracted the fever between that year and the beginning of the twentieth century. About 100,000 victims succumbed to the disease during that period, 41,000 in New Orleans alone. The deadliest flare-up occurred along the Mississippi River, from the Gulf of Mexico to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1878. More than 20,000 people died that year as the fever swept upstream." Writer records the observations of Mathew Carey in an account of one outbreak in Philadelphia. "Many never walked on the footpath, but went into the middle of the streets, to avoid being infected by passing houses wherein people had died. Acquaintances and friends avoided each other in the streets, and only signified their regard with a cold nod. The old custom of shaking hands fell into such general disuse, that many were affronted at even the offer of a hand." Writer defines yellow fever as, "an acute, infectious viral disease, with characteristics ranging from fever and flu-like symptoms in mild cases, to jaundice, internal bleeding, and liver and kidney damage in severe attacks." Writer indicates that the measures taken by the federal government to control yellow fever came about not because of a concern for American citizens as a matter of domestic policy, but rather as a wartime policy seeking to protect the health of American servicemen stationed in Cuba and other parts of the Caribbean during and shortly after the Spanish-American War. Writer notes, "American General Fitzhugh Lee, consul general to Cuba, said the scourge 'is worse than I ever knew it to be.' Meanwhile, at an American officers' mess of eight men, an old English toast was resurrected: 'to those who are gone already and here's to the next to go!' Six of the men were soon dead." The Army's surgeon general appointed a board to study yellow fever in Cuba and Dr. Walter Reed was named as director. The other members were James Carroll, Aristides Agramonte--a Cuban, and Jesse Lazear. Another talented physician, Dr. Henry Rose Carter, would later join them. Carter had studied yellow fever in the Mississippi Valley and concluded that an incubation period was required after the mosquito was first infected with yellow fever in order for the insect to be able to transmit the disease. Writer notes that the legacy of Reed's research would be seen in the work of Major William Crawford Gorgas, a sanitary and public health engineer stationed in Havana and a contemporary of Reed's who initially doubted Reed's theories. He was converted into an enthusiastic supporter. Of Gorgas Writer explains, "Once the mosquito hypothesis had been proven, it fell to then-Major William Crawford Gorgas to rid Havana of the life threatening pests. Later, his application in Panama of the lessons learned in Cuba made possible the long-dreamed-of construction of a canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans." Dr. Joshua Nott of New Orleans had published a medical article that theorized that mosquitos might be the agent of transfer for yellow fever in 1848. Dr. Carlos Juan Finlay of Cuba, a respected medical authority, was making the same assertion about this time, also. Reed came to the same conclusion after realizing that a prisoner in a guardhouse who came down with the illness could not have had many other opportunities for contact with the outside world other than the tiny insects that were able to fly through barred windows. Writer quotes from an article written years later by Reed and published in a medical journal. "It was conjectured at that time that, perhaps, some insect capable of conveying the infection, such as the mosquito had entered through the cell window, bitten this particular prisoner, and then passed out again." Yet the theory needed to be tested in controlled laboratory conditions. Dr. Jesse Lazear, a companion and associate of Dr. Reed, subjected himself to the bite of an infected insect and died. James Carroll repeated the experiment and became very ill. Reed would name the military camp soon established for the study of yellow fever after Dr. Lazear. Bean describes Dr. Jesse Lazear in the following passage. "In view of his later premature and tragic death, one cannot think of Lazear without great sadness. He was from all accounts a wonderfully agreeable man whose company gave Reed and the rest of them much pleasure. Agramonte, who had been Lazear's classmate in medical school, called him 'the type of the old southern gentleman, affectionate with a high sense of honor, a staunch friend and faithful.' Lazear had just joined the volunteer Army Medical Corps, having presented recommendations from William Welch himself. He was uneasily aware of being only thirty-three, but his background was formidable, including graduation in medicine from Columbia, an internship in Bellevue, work in pathology and bacteriology in Germany, and a teaching appointment at the Hopkins Hospital, where he worked under Osler and Thayer. As Thayer's junior associate, he had investigated the details of the newly discovered role of the mosquito in transmitting malaria. In his twenty-page report on electrozone, Reed carefully gave Lazear credit for helping him." Private William Dean, Troop B, Seventh U.S. Cavalry also volunteered to become a test subject. These first experiments were replicated at Camp Lazear, a military post consisting of seven tents and two 14 by 20 foot frame buildings. Private John E. Kissinger and John J. Moran, a civilian clerk, were among the first to volunteer themselves as test subjects. Reed had been authorized by General Leonard Wood, military governor of Cuba, to pay one hundred dollars in gold to each test subject with an additional bonus of another hundred for subjects who contracted the disease while serving in this test. Kissinger spoke for himself and fellow volunteers when he refused the reward, saying that he participated in the study, 'solely in the interest of humanity and the cause of science.' Reed touched his cap and replied respectfully, 'Gentlemen, I salute you.' With Lazear dead, Carroll ill and Agramonte on leave, the responsibility for the yellow fever project was now primarily Reed's concern. The results of Dean's test were reproduced again in a controlled environment. Writer captures some of the drama of this time as he describes the culmination of Dr. Reed's research. "On December 21, infected mosquitoes were released into one side of the Infected Mosquito Building, in which all items had been disinfected with steam. James Moran, who seemed determined to get yellow fever, entered the infested side of the building, while two other volunteers entered the mosquito-free side. On Christmas morning, Moran finally contracted a non-fatal case of the disease. As 1900 drew to a close, Walter Reed proudly wrote to his wife that he and his assistants had lifted 'the impenetrable veil that surrounded the causation of this most wonderful, dreadful pest of humanity . . . the prayer that has been mine for twenty years, that I might be permitted in some way or at some time to do something good to alleviate human suffering has been granted! A thousand Happy New Years." The new year brought Reed public recognition and private grief. Bean writes, "On September 6, 1901, William McKinley, the president of the United States, was shot by an assassin in Buffalo, New York, during the week the American Public Health Association was meeting in that city. Walter Reed was about to present his paper on 'The Prevention of Yellow Fever' when the event took place, and several of his friends and at least one of his enemies were among the consultants who hovered over the fallen president until he died on September 14." The report that made Reed famous included the names of the other board members as co-authors. Colin Norman writes in an article for Science magazine that Carter and Finlay were given full credit in their advisory capacity. Reed died of appendicitis in 1902. Crosby and Haubrich suggest in an article for the Journal of the American Medical Association that Reed's appendix had been weakened by previous illness, possibly cholera. These authors report that the day before Reed's death a close friend, Major Jefferson Randolph Kean, attempted to cheer Reed by saying Reed was certain to receive a promotion in the near future. Reed is said to have replied, 'I care nothing for that now.' Crosby and Haubrich indicate that during the last two years of his life Walter Reed struggled with depression brought about by a sense of guilt at having prospered at the expense of other people's suffering. He believed that the principle of informed consent did not absolve him of his share of moral responsibility for an experiment that risked human life. Reed wrote the surgeon general, "The responsibility for the life of a human weighs upon me very heavily just at present, and I am dreadfully melancholic." Walter Reed was haunted by this sense of responsibility for the rest of his life. According to Crosby and Haubrich, Lazear kept a diary while stationed in Cuba. After Lazear's death, Reed kept this diary in his personal possession in the top drawer of his office desk. This diary disappeared shortly after Walter Reed's death. He died on November 23, 1902. During his last few days Reed obstinately postponed medical treatment that might have saved his life. § Bibliography Bailey, James H. "How a Reed Was Bent: The Formative Years of a Medical Hero" Virginia Cavalcade Vol. I No. 3 Winter 1951 The Library of Virginia Richmond, Virginia pages 16-18 Bean, William B. Walter Reed: A Biography University Press of Virginia Charlottesville 1982 Chappell, Gordon Stelling "Surgeon at Ft. Sidney: Captain Walter Reed's Experiences, 1883-1884" Nebraska History Nebraska State Historical Society Vol. 54 No. 3 Fall 1973 pages 419-439 COL Crosby, William H. MC and Haubrich, William S. MD "The Death of Walter Reed" Journal of the American Medical Association Vol. 248 No. 11 Sept 17, 1982 pages 1342-1345 Kelly, Howard A. Walter Reed and Yellow Fever The Norman, Remington Company Baltimore, Maryland 1923 Knight, Myra Gregory "Walter Reed's Biographer" University of Virginia Alumni News Charlottesville, Virginia Vol. LXXI No. 1 Sept/Oct 1982 pages 20 & 21 Mrs. Page recommends "Walter Reed Remembered" Stripe Vol. 38 No. 36 Sept 10, 1982 Walter Reed Army Medical Center Washington D.C. and modestly claims her own manuscript merely summarizes this article. Norman, Colin "The Unsung Hero of Yellow Fever?" Science Vol. 223 No. 4643 30 March 1984 pages 1370-1372 Soffer, Alfred "Obituaries: William Bennett Bean" Journal of the American Medical Association Chicago, Illinois Vol 261 No. 15 Apr 21, 1989 page 2194 Writer, James V. "Did the Mosquito Do It?" American History Jan/Feb 1997 pages 45-51
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