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few days earlier, Kean had learned that a friend and neighbor was down with yellow fever. Kean had been ordered to stay out of the infected district, but early one morning, he decided to make a visit to his sick friend. He took every precaution, never entering the infected house, and instead sat outside on the porch where the air was clear. “I obeyed the letter but not the spirit of the order,” Kean would later write. He spoke to a nurse through the iron bars of the open window. He never came in contact with any of the infected items, nor with his friend. Kean was shocked, five days later, when he fell feverish and was admitted to hut number 118 in the yellow fever ward of Camp Columbia.

CHAPTER 13

The Yellow Fever Commission

WAR DEPARTMENT,

Surgeon General’s Office

Washington, May 23, 1900.

To the ADJUTANT GENERAL OF THE ARMY.

Sir:

I have the honor to recommend that Major Walter Reed, Surgeon, U.S. Army, and Contract Surgeon James Carroll, U.S. Army, be ordered to proceed from this city to Camp Columbia, Cuba, reporting their arrival and instructions to the commanding officer of the post, the commanding general, Department of Havana and Pinar del Rio and the commanding general Division of Cuba.

I also recommend the organization of a medical board, with headquartersat Camp Columbia, for the purpose of pursuing scientific investigations with reference to the infectious diseases prevalent on the island of Cuba. —Stricken

The board to be constituted as follows:—Major Walter Reed, Surgeon, U.S. Army; Contract Surgeon James Carroll, U.S. Army; Contract Surgeon Aristides Agramonte, U.S. Army; and Contract Surgeon Jesse W. Lazear, U.S. Army.

Contract Surgeon Agramonte is now on duty in the City of Havana and Contract Surgeon Lazear at Camp Columbia. It is not considered necessary to relieve them from the duties to which they are at present assigned.

The board should act under general instructions which will be communicated to Major Reed by the Surgeon General of the Army.

Very respectfully, George M. Sternberg, Surgeon General, U.S. Army

On the evening of June 25, 1900, Walter Reed sat on the deck of the Sedgwick and wrote a letter to his wife. A chill imbued the inky sky, and Reed fastened the overcoat his wife had sent aboard just moments before the steamer set sail from New York that morning. He had not thought to pack it; after all, he would hardly need it once he arrived in Cuba.

The unfinished letter to his wife would take several more attempts to finish, which Reed literally chronicled as Effort no. 1, Effort no. 2, Effort no. 3 at the tops of the pages. As with most of Reed’s voyages, he would spend much of it sucking lemons and eating crushed ice to keep the motion sickness at bay. Regardless of his efforts, and regular doses of bromide, Reed consistently “fed the fish” over the railing of the boat, losing five pounds on the voyage.

As the breeze began to warm and clouds gathered over the green fringe of the Florida coast, Reed managed to keep down an orange, a cup of coffee and dry toast. A ribbon of rain showers lined the coast, and from the deck, the men watched schools of flying fish and porpoises chase the Sedgwick as the 5,000-ton steamer barreled toward Cuba.

In the wan morning light, before the sun had burned off the haze, the buildings of Havana appeared in shades of gray and blue, wedged between the dark sea and pale sky. But as the light rose, the buildings brightened, and the weary stone of El Morro Castillo warmed, incandescent bursts of green growing amid its stones. Waves knocked against the fortress to one side of the harbor and against the seawall on the other as though the sea itself were sleeping, its breast rising and falling in heavy, rhythmic breaths.

Reed sat on the deck, again writing a letter to his wife, and watched Havana come into focus, smelling the salt, steam and wet stone, and farther off, the scent of smoke, coffee and old hay. The harbor blazed with color: The flags of nations all over the world whipped in the breeze, white sails skimmed