The American Plague - Molly Caldwell Crosby [69]
As Reed wrote to Emilie that July afternoon, Carroll and Lazear worked in the lab, but Agramonte had been sent into the countryside to investigate a fever outbreak. Again, Reed was thinking of when he could sail for the U.S. and finish his typhoid work. Then, a telegram arrived.
Agramonte, inspecting a camp at Pinar del Rio, the capital of Cuba’s westernmost province, had found something. Reports surfaced about a sudden increase of sickness among soldiers. The fevers had an unusually high mortality rate, and on July 19, Agramonte was dispatched to investigate the outbreak. The recent death of a soldier, supposedly suffering from malaria, afforded Agramonte with a fresh autopsy. He began his investigation of the dead, following the internal clues of gilded organs and tar-like blood remnants, searching the bloodstream for malarial parasites. But the yellow corpses left little doubt as to what had caused the death.
Agramonte walked the hot corridors of the military hospital where he found, in bed after bed, patients burning with fever. No quarantine or disinfection measures had been taken. He sent a telegram to headquarters to the chief surgeon describing the gross negligence on the part of the doctors in charge of the hospital and asked for direction. He received a telegram in response with instructions: Take charge of cases. Reed goes on morning train. Wire for anything wanted. Nurses will be sent. Instructions wired commanding officer. Other doctors should not attend cases. Establish strict quarantine at hospital. You will be relieved as soon as an immune can be sent to replace you. Report daily by wire.
Reed left Camp Columbia immediately for the western interior of Cuba, traveling by train through a valley of tobacco and sugarcane fields, the smell of molasses thick in the air. Pinar del Rio boasts the most dramatic topography in Cuba. Giant limestone formations, remnants of the Jurassic era, tower over the fields like stone haystacks. A low-lying spine of mountains stands in the distance, and pine trees rise like spires in the countryside.
Reed met Agramonte, and together, they surveyed the sleeping quarters of the barracks where hundreds of beds stood in regimented rows. In such close quarters, the fever should have spread rampantly from one soiled bed to the next. Conditions were filthy, with ample opportunity for germs to spread. The doctors at Pinar del Rio performed only the barest practices of disinfecting bedding, soaking sheets and pillowcases in bichloride, then sponging the mattress. Reed and Agramonte placed all blame for the fiasco on the army doctors stationed there and filed a formal complaint with the surgeon general.
Before he left, Reed noted one other peculiar circumstance at Pinar del Rio. In early June, a private had been court-martialed and sentenced to three months of hard labor. During this time, he was kept in a cell in Pinar del Rio. The private and seven other men were locked in their cells on June 1 and had no contact with the outside world. No visitors saw the prisoners. Nonetheless, by the end of June, the private and one other cellmate had come down with yellow fever and died. None of the other men in the cell, nor any of the guards, became ill. It was as if something blew through the bars of the windows to afflict only those two men.
Reed met with Lazear and Carroll when he returned to Camp Columbia, while Agramonte continued on the train to Havana. Later, much would be made of the fact that Agramonte was not present at that meeting. In an article published several years later, James Carroll would accuse Agramonte of hardly being involved with the board’s work and not even being aware of their experiments. But, Agramonte’s lab was located in Havana, as it had been long before the Yellow Fever Board was convened. It was not unusual at all for Reed to meet with Carroll and Lazear at Columbia Barracks while Agramonte continued his work elsewhere. And, most likely, Reed had already