The American Plague - Molly Caldwell Crosby [125]
The account of the officers in their dress whites discussing medicine on the veranda in the evenings was based on Truby’s book. Truby noted that Reed’s interest in yellow fever was tireless.
The details about Lazear’s courtship with Mabel, his trips to California to meet her family and visit their ranch, as well as the date and place of their marriage, came from a series of letters written by Jesse Lazear to his mother, Charlotte Sweitzer, in July, August and September of 1896. Those letters are part of Hench’s collection at the University of Virginia.
Lazear’s description of Havana was taken from a letter to his mother on February 11, 1900. Lazear’s personal photo album of their first few months in Havana and Marianao is held in the Hench collection. The letter Lazear wrote to his mother requesting that she store the boxes of golf clubs, Shakespeare, linens and dishes was dated February 15, 1900. Additional descriptions about the Lazears’ home in Cuba—like a partition made of matting from a Chinese store, the shower bath and physical details about the home—were found in letters Lazear wrote to his mother during February and March of 1900. Additional details about what they ate and what they fed the baby, as well as descriptions of taking Houston to the beach were found in letters to Lazear’s mother, dated February 15 and March 15, 1900.
The account of tree frogs settling into the rafters of buildings at Columbia Barracks was found in Truby’s Memoir of Walter Reed.
On April 6, 1900, Lazear wrote to his mother to tell her that Mabel and Houston would be returning to the States on the Sedgwick around April 14. As transports were often a day early or a day late, that date may not be exact. Walter Reed, in a letter to his wife, makes reference to a ticket on a transport like the Sedgwick costing $12.
Additional details about the soldiers’ time at the Columbia Barracks were gathered from various letters and photographs of the social hall. Jesse Lazear wrote to his mother that he often stood on his porch, but rarely ventured to the weekly dances. I know he could hear the firing of the hour at El Morro Castillo becauseWalter Reed wrote to his wife, on December 31, 1900, that they could hear it on quiet nights.
Information about Major Jefferson Randolph Kean and the diary of yellow fever cases that he kept was taken primarily from Bean’s Walter Reed. Kean’s description of Reed, his whimsical humor and penchant for quaint stories, was found in a letter Kean wrote to Philip S. Hench on January 23, 1944.
I found all information about Lazear’s investigation of Sergeant Sherwood’s case of yellow fever—the tests conducted and the autopsy notes—in a notebook kept at the New York Academy of Medicine. The notebook has a fascinating history. It mysteriously disappeared after Reed’s work in Cuba was completed. It was discovered thirty years later in an ash barrel and sold for twenty-five dollars to Archibald Malloch, who gave it to the academy. The New York Academy of Medicine has the notebook labeled as the “Record of the Yellow Fever Commission’s work in the handwriting of Dr. Neate.” Neate was Walter Reed’s lab assistant. However, historians Philip S. Hench and Reed biographer Laura Wood Roper located the notebook at the academy in the 1940s, and both believed the handwriting in the notebook to be that of Lazear’s and Reed’s. Likewise, when I visited the New York Academy of Medicine in 2004, I took samples of Lazear’s and Reed’s distinctive handwriting; they matched the records in the notebook perfectly. In my book, I have therefore described this notebook as the one belonging to Jesse Lazear until September 1900. In December of that year, the records began again in Walter Reed’s handwriting.
The quote about entomology, keying in anatomical minutiae, the formation of mouthparts, the bewildering pattern of wing venation is from Robert Desowitz’s book.
Truby’s quote about the epidemic in Quemados was taken from his book Memoir of Walter Reed.
The account of Kean’s illness and his visit to Major Edmunds is based on a letter