The American Plague - Molly Caldwell Crosby [79]
Plans were made for a quiet burial so as not to affect the overall morale of the camp; but Truby insisted that Lazear receive full military honors. The entire military personnel of the camp, along with many other friends and officers, walked to the cemetery, while ambulances carried the nurses. Everyone wore white uniforms as they surrounded the gravesite like a colonnade and listened to the post band play taps. Though close to fifty mourners attended the service, only one member of the Yellow Fever Board was there: James Carroll. Reed was still in the U.S., and Agramonte had left a few days before on orders from General Wood to gather supplies in New York.
The same day as the funeral, September 26, Mabel Lazear sat in the home of her mother-in-law on Atlantic Avenue in Beverly, Massachusetts. She felt exhausted after recovering from childbirth and looking after a newborn; she had only been out of the hospital for a couple of weeks. The bell rang that morning, and she was handed a cable message. Her first thought must have been that it was from her husband—she had not heard from him in two weeks, and he had plans to return to the U.S. sometime in October. Then, she read the short cable: Dr. Lazear died at 8 this evening. It was signed by Kean, who thought that Mabel received word days ago that her husband was ill with yellow fever. She had not.
Jesse Lazear’s logbook, tall, thin, edged in dark red leather, had its last entry on September 13 with the listing of Guinea Pig No. 1. Lazear’s distinctive handwriting, with flourishing letters and elegant shape, ended that September, and new entries in different handwriting, most likely that of Walter Reed’s, did not begin again until December.
Reed retrieved Lazear’s logbook and studied it for clues. After careful examination, Reed concluded that Lazear had most likely infected himself and thus died of a medical suicide. Insurance would not be paid out to his family if this proved to be the case, and in all likelihood, that is why Lazear neither listed his name in the ledger nor admitted to self-infecting. Or, perhaps, Lazear did not want his family to know the truth. Mabel wrote to James Carroll asking for the details of her husband’s death, pleading that in spite of his passion for medicine, she could not believe her husband would ever deliberately infect himself. After all, he had a wife and two children.
Shortly after the experiments in Cuba ended, Lazear’s logbook disappeared from Walter Reed’s office and was not seen for fifty years. The second, smaller notebook that Truby found in the pocket of Lazear’s uniform was never seen again. The real cause of Jesse Lazear’s death was a secret carried to the grave by every member of the Yellow Fever Board.
CHAPTER 18
Camp Lazear
Walter Reed sailed on the Crook, by way of Matanzas, into Havana, on October 4, 1900. This time he approached the city with a poignant mixture of sorrow and purpose. He could smell coal, Cuban coffee, fruit fallen from the trees and carbolic acid in the streets: September had seen 269 cases of yellow fever, the worst epidemic Havana had experienced since the start of the Spanish-American War. When he had sailed out of Cuba in August, yellow fever had been an assignment, a challenge he felt equal to as a scientist. Few cases had plagued their camp, and the majority of Reed’s offensive had been fought beneath the lens of a microscope. Now, the disease was much more than that. It had taken the life of a beloved friend and colleague and impaired the life of another. The war to conquer this disease was nearing its end, but Reed knew that in order to defeat it, he would have to come dangerouslyclose to the enemy, sending his soldiers into the frontlines.
Even worse, the leader of the Yellow Fever Board had not even been there for the incredible breakthrough. Reed had never expected the results to come so fast, and he was guilt-ridden that he had not been present when two of his team members contracted the fever. He did not even get to attend the funeral of his friend Jesse Lazear. Lazear’s death cast