The American Plague - Molly Caldwell Crosby [51]
As “Lee’s Miserables,” as the troops came to be known, waged a losing war, Union soldiers swarmed into Virginia, toward Richmond. The sound of cannons trembled in the night air, smoke garlanding above the farmland. For Virginians, it meant food shortages, rationing, ruined farmland, failed crops. War pierced the general calm of the Reed household as well when Reed’s two oldest brothers enlisted. At Antietam, a cannonball struck his brother James. In a crude hospital tent, the surgeon amputated James’s hand. He returned home like so many of his peers, physically clipped and psychologically broken.
Though the battlefield proved treacherous during the Civil War, disease was the greatest enemy. An estimated two-thirds of Union and Confederate soldiers died of disease, not wounds. Yellow fever was one of the most deadly. With this in mind, one of history’s more famous examples of germ warfare surfaced. Dr. Luke Pryor Blackburn of Kentucky, known as “Dr. Black Vomit,” attempted to ship infected clothing from yellow fever victims to major northern cities. He also had plans to poison New York’s water supply, as well as burn the city. He then turned his attention to assassination, sending trunks of clothes from the yellow fever wards to President Lincoln in hopes of giving him a lethal dose of the fever. Again, his attempts were unsuccessful thanks to ignorance about how the disease was spread. His criminal efforts did little to harm his career, however. After the war, Dr. Blackburn continued to practice medicine and aided victims during the 1878 epidemic in Memphis. In the following years, he would become the governor of Kentucky.
A good student, Reed attended school every year except one during the height of the Civil War. He drank knowledge. Not born to privilege, he was equipped instead with other tools for success— lofty principles and swelling determination. As his older brothers finished their schooling, Reed’s father asked the Methodist Church if he might move to Charlottesville to minister and allow his boys to attend the university.
Walter Reed was fourteen when the family moved to Charlottesville, on the cusp of the Shenandoah Mountains. Charlottesville rattled with traffic along the cobblestone streets. Churches and storefronts lined the walks. The town even had its own daily paper. It was here that the Reed brothers entered Mr. Jefferson’s university; the school made an exception in allowing Walter Reed to begin at age fifteen because his elder brothers were also in attendance.
As a boy, Reed was thin boned, determination and conviction visible on his face. His cheekbones were high, his eyes set close to one another and his brow narrow, so that he had a look of steadfast concern that would stay with him well into adulthood. But it was not his physical appearance that people noticed. People took to his gracious and well-mannered nature. He was honest and likable, and that left a marked impression.
Reed appeared before the board at the University of Virginia with an erect posture, chin set forward, trying to look older than his age. Reed had two older brothers at the university, and his father would not be able to afford the remainder of Walter Reed’s education. To earn a master of arts degree, a student completed studies in eight different departments ranging from Latin and Greek to mathematics. Reed had only finished courses in Latin, Greek and history and literature—he was far short of the requirements for an M.A. degree. Reed asked permission to attain a degree in medicine instead. True to the time period, an M.D. could be earned more easily and in less time than an M.A. The board considered his request impossible, so they gave their consent. They made a gentleman’s agreement on the deal. Should this boy with only one year of university experience pass the medical