The American Plague - Molly Caldwell Crosby [54]
Nonetheless, medicine was in a period of great transition, and Walter Reed was missing it. In Europe, use of the microscope had given birth to the new field of pathology, finally separating general patient-focused medicine from real science. Laboratories had become the epicenter for experimental medicine. And medical education had turned from mere lectures to investigative study. The United States had decided to join, at last, the progressive movement in medicine.
Johns Hopkins had been established in Baltimore in 1876 as a school dedicated to modern science, modeled after European institutes, particularly the German ones. Germany had long been at the forefront for not only medicine, but their system of education. In Germany, knowledge was readily available, and students could move freely from one university to another, picking and choosing their subjects. British and American doctors flocked to Germany, and later France, for this independent, experimental system of study. In Europe, physicians and scientists could focus their energies on evidenced-based medicine and the life sciences in a culture unencumbered by theocratic shackles. It was time for America to offer its own institute for such study, but like many progressive ideas, it would be met with controversy.
When Thomas Huxley, the great evolutionist, was asked to speak at the launch of Johns Hopkins University, it outraged Baltimore society. One minister wrote: “It were better to have asked God to be there. It would have been absurd to ask them both.” In his book, The Great Influenza, historian John M. Barry wrote that Huxley did not even mention God in his speech, and it came in an era when “American universities had nearly two hundred endowed chairs of theology and fewer than five in medicine.” Barry added, “In no area did the United States lag behind the rest of the world so much as in its study of the life sciences and medicine.”
Though the Johns Hopkins medical school would not officially open until 1893, its research labs were in full operation. Finally, America had a place for real scientific study, and in the following two decades, nearly every distinguished physician or scientist would come out of those labs.
The new American frontier extended beyond geography; it influenced medicine as well. Doctors began to push the limits of science beyond the boundaries of the Victorian era, into the Progressive one. The United States would finally have the opportunity to produce its own Pasteur, Lister, Koch.
Walter Reed had been out of touch with the world of medical research for nearly fifteen years. By 1890, when Reed, Emilie and their children returned to the East Coast, he ached to learn of the latest advancements, begin work in the lab and attend lectures. Reed was granted permission to begin studies under Dr. William Welch, a doctor only one year older than Reed, who had studied in Germany with Robert Koch and Paul Ehrlich. Balding and be-whiskered, Welch was known as “Popsy.” One historian wrote: “No one symbolized the Germanic spirit in American experimental medicine better than Welch.”
Welch had been handpicked by John Shaw Billings to join the staff at Johns Hopkins in 1884, and he is largely credited with selecting or influencing America’s greatest medical minds—William Osler, William Halsted, Howard Kelly, Simon Flexner and Walter Reed. Under Welch, Johns Hopkins attracted brilliance the way a lens draws light.
Reed worked with Welch in the “Pathological,” as they called their lab. Rather than listening to instruction, they engaged in learning, studying and identifying bacteria beneath the microscope, dissecting animals and experimenting. The Hopkins doctors would break from their work to lunch on wild duck or fish at the “church,” a pet term for the local tavern that seemed more appropriate to scientists than a pub.
Reed thrived in the new atmosphere and appealed to a superior, John Shaw Billings, to stay at Hopkins. His request was denied, and he was sent, yet again, for a short stint at various forts, binding wounds from the Indian Wars and