The American Plague - Molly Caldwell Crosby [130]
Details of how Mabel Lazear learned of her husband’s death come from Hench’s “An Illustrated Talk by Philip S. Hench” on January 31, 1955, as well as Hench’s “Interview with Jefferson Randolph Kean,” on January 6, 1944. Mabel’s letter to Carroll, dated November 10, 1900, is part of the Hench collection.
The account of Reed retrieving Lazear’s logbook is based on Truby’s account, as well as Bean’s Walter Reed.
Camp Lazear
Details of Walter Reed’s return to Cuba aboard the Crook were part of Hench’s “The Conquest of Yellow Fever.” The account of Robert P. Cooke sharing a cabin with Reed comes from Yellow Jack. The letter reprimanding Cooke, written on July 24, 1900, was written by the acting chief surgeon, Alexander Stark. The letter is part of the Hench collection.
Statistics about the yellow fever epidemic in Havana that year came from Bean’s book.
Reed’s general depression over the death of Lazear was noticed by Truby, as well as others at Camp Columbia. He also wrote to Emilie about it. His guilt at being in the United States while his board self-experimented was recorded in his letter to Kean on September 25, 1900.
Truby’s Memoir of Walter Reed describes the following weeks when Reed wrote and researched his paper on yellow fever. He also related the scene when Reed questioned William Dean about his yellow fever case. Reed’s paper “The Etiology of Yellow Fever: A Preliminary Note” can be found in the Hench collection and at the National Library of Medicine. The excerpt from the Indianapolis Journal was taken from a letter by Mary Fishback to Philip S. Hench, August 30, 1940. The New York Times quote about the presentation appeared in their “Topics of the Times” on November 10, 1900. The criticism from the Washington Post was published on November 2, 1900.
The letter in which Sternberg informs Reed that he has submitted the paper for publication was dated October 23, 1900, and is part of the Hench collection. That paper appeared in the Philadelphia Medical Journal on October 27.
The account of Reed meeting with General Wood in the Governor’s Palace, Havana, to request money for Camp Lazear was written in “A Review of Dr. Howard A. Kelly’s Book Walter Reed and Yellow Fever,” by Kean. The review was never published, but is held in the Hench collection.
Details about the development of Camp Lazear came primarily from Agramonte’s account. Carroll later denied that Agramonte had anything to do with selecting the site for the camp, but it made the most sense to have Agramonte scout out a location. He had lived in Cuba the longest, and the final location of the camp was on a farm belonging to some of his friends—Finca San Jose in Marianao outside of Havana.
The description of LaRoche’s books was based on personal observation. I looked through a copy of the original 1853 publication at the library of Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, Texas. And the account of Reed quoting LaRoche, the storm that destroyed their batch of mosquitoes and the hunt for new ones, all came from Truby.
The dimensions and details about Building No. 1 (the Infected Clothing Building) and Building No. 2 (Infected Mosquito Building) came from a number of sources. First and foremost, in 2005, I visited the site of what remains of Camp Lazear in Marianao, which is now a slum section outside of Havana. Only Building No. 1 still stands, but it was discovered by Hench and John Moran in the 1940s and returned to its original state as part of a memorial park dedicated to the yellow fever experiments. Hench worked with a number of medical officials and the Cuban government under Batista to renovate the building and erect a memorial wall. By the time I visited in 2005, few people in Havana knew where the park was, and the building was in a state of disrepair. However, it was still the same dimensions that Reed designed, and looking