The American Plague - Molly Caldwell Crosby [61]
On May 1, Major Jefferson Randolph Kean began keeping a journal to record any cases of yellow fever. Kean was the chief medical officer for western Cuba, and he lived in Quemados, Marianao. Kean was also a close friend of Walter Reed’s. Both graduates of the University of Virginia, the two met in Key West investigating a smallpox outbreak. Kean found Reed’s “whimsical humor” and penchant for “quaint stories” entertaining, and they would becomelifelong friends. The two had even exchanged frustrated letters when Surgeon General Sternberg had denied their placements in Cuba when the Spanish-American War broke out. Sternberg did not want to risk two of his best medical officers; neither had ever had yellow fever.
On May 21, Kean recorded in his diary that two cases of yellow fever appeared on General Lee Street, several blocks apart and in homes that had no contact with one another. General Lee Street ran through Quemados, a town of rainbow-colored houses set against ripe hillsides and thickets of tropical plant life. Palm fronds and bougainvillea blossoms, like fuchsia petals of parchment, enclosed the homes, one of which held the feverish wife of a cavalryman. She was too afraid to call the doctor, even as the bleeding began, for fear of being sent to die in the yellow fever ward.
Two days later, Lazear was called to No. 20 General Lee Street to investigate Sergeant Sherwood. When Lazear arrived, Sherwood was running a temperature of 100.4 and complained of a headache. By the next day, Sherwood’s temperature rose to 102. Lazear suspected the worst, quarantined the house and sent the sergeant to the yellow fever hospital. He conducted the Widal test to rule out typhoid and studied the blood for malarial parasites, but Sherwood’s skin grew mustard colored and his gums began to bleed. By nightfall, he was delirious and slipped into a coma, his breathing heavy and strained. The following day, May 30, Sergeant Sherwood died at 11:30 a.m. Lazear autopsied the dead soldier, making comments in his notebook: “Extreme jaundice, peculiar mucus like applesauce, liver was a bright yellow color, stomach contained about a pint of black coffee ground fluid.” It was a clear case of yellow fever. Another twenty-three cases would quickly arise in the town of Quemados.
Lazear also kept detailed records of the mosquitoes beginning to swarm in May, sending samples to an entomologist in the United States. Lazear’s meticulous nature was perfectly suited to this sort of study; as described by one tropical medicine professor: “keying in an identity depends on anatomical minutiae—how the insect’s hairs are placed and grouped, the formation of the mouth parts, the sex parts, the bewildering pattern of wing venation.” During this time, Lazear began killing and dissecting his pet collection of mosquitoes, or “birds” as they were nicknamed, most of which, he noted, had striped legs and bodies.
The fever appeared dangerously agile, jumping from one house to another, traveling from Calzada Real and back to General Lee Street. On Real Street, in close proximity to No. 20, a saloon and a number of local bordellos were shut down when it looked as if the risk of yellow fever was greater in those men who frequented them. For physicians trying to track the disease, it proved evasive and unpredictable, as if it engaged their interest as sport. “This epidemic,” wrote Truby, “with fifty cases and twelve deaths in one of the finest and most sanitary villages in Cuba disturbed everyone and left a lasting impression.”
On June 21, 1900, the entries in Jefferson Kean’s diary came to an abrupt stop.
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