The American Plague - Molly Caldwell Crosby [39]
Woodworth and his southern supporters lost the debate, and their bill was defeated. John Shaw Billings won the day, and in spite of the ruthlessness of this argument, his place in history remains a great one. Billings was instrumental in opening Johns Hopkins University, and he started the Surgeon General’s Library, which would one day become the National Library of Medicine.
Eleven days after the very public debate and humiliating loss, John Woodworth died; his death was rumored to be a suicide. In the wake of this brawl and a divided nation, the National Board of Health was formed.
CHAPTER 7
The Havana Commission
While Memphis struggled to rebuild itself, the nation continued to grapple over the question of what to do about yellow fever. Hayes’s Board of Experts had failed to do anything more than provide statistics for past epidemics and the dismal results of the most recent one. What Hayes needed now was a group of experts to go to the source of the problem: Cuba. After all, Cuba had proven to be the hub for all major epidemics of the American plague over the last two centuries. The country could not afford to wait for yellow fever to strike another severe blow. It had to go to the source of the problem and seek out the virus. The National Board of Health organized a group of yellow fever experts to travel to Cuba and study the disease—they were the Havana Yellow Fever Commission.
Dr. Carlos Finlay had an air of madness about him. He was not mad, quite the opposite; he was brilliant. But he had trouble expressing himself, in part because his mind seemed to work faster than words could accommodate, but mostly because a childhood bout with a nervous system disorder had left him with a distinct stutter.
Juan Carlos Finlay was born in Cuba in 1833. The Finlay family moved to Havana when Carlos, as he would choose to be called, was only one year old. His father was a Scottish physician who was on a British expeditionary force when his ship wrecked near Trinidad, and he met Finlay’s mother. In Cuba, Finlay’s father practiced medicine and owned a coffee plantation, where Carlos was homeschooled as a child. Finlay’s father also loved to travel, and he took Carlos with him on trips throughout the West Indies, South America, and later, Europe.
Finlay’s education was multinational as well. He was sent to school in France, but eventually returned after a bout of typhoid. Like his father, Carlos Finlay wanted to practice medicine, but he needed a bachelor of arts degree to do so in Havana. Finlay moved to the United States where medical education was still substandard, and he would not need a degree to enter medical school. He graduated from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia.
What Finlay really wanted, however, was to return home to Havana; but, before he could practice medicine there, he would need to pass the oral board examination. Finlay’s stutter—paired with Havana’s low opinion of American medicine—caused him to fail at his first attempt, but persistence was a hallmark of Finlay’s personality. After a year of traveling with his father, Finlay settled back in Havana for good, finally passing his oral boards, and beginning his practice.
Dr. Carlos Finlay was a true intellectual of the Victorian age. He spoke fluent English, French, German and Spanish, and could read Latin; he liked to have breakfast in one language, lunch in a second and dinner in a third. He excelled at chess. Finlay was a member of Havana’s Royal Academy of Medical, Physical and Natural Sciences. He was also charitable, often taking on patients who could not afford care. Finlay published articles on subjects varying from cholera to leprosy, gravity to plant diseases, but his most prolific writing involved yellow fever. During his life, he published forty articles on the subject. He was particularly interested in the atmospheric conditions surrounding yellow fever— especially after the 1878 epidemic in the United States. In direct opposition to the prevailing contagionists