The American Plague - Molly Caldwell Crosby [91]
Eleven days after the initial attack, John Andrus was making a slow recovery, but with complications. Dr. Roger Post Ames heard of the case from his own sick bed. After all nurses had left his station, Dr. Ames ordered his assistant, Lambert, and another man to carry his own cot to the yellow fever ward where he could examine and hopefully help Andrus. With time, and the help of Dr. Ames, Andrus recovered fully.
Forty years later, John H. Andrus would lie in Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C., where he would spend the rest of his life bedridden due to spinal problems he attributed to his case of yellow fever. Though doctors could never find the true cause for his paralysis, Andrus wrote, “I would rather think my condition is due to my humble part in the work of Major Reed and his Yellow Fever Board than from some mysterious and unaccountable cause.”
The final blood experiments answered a number of questions about yellow fever. Not only was the virus living in the blood of mosquitoes but also in that of humans. Their discovery explained why an epidemic could plague a city for an entire season. And, though the people may die off or flee, the loaded mosquitoes only grow more prolific until the air itself seems steeped in poison.
Nature had found the perfect place to hide the yellow fever virus. It seeded itself and grew in the blood, blooming yellow and running red.
CHAPTER 21
The Etiology of Yellow Fever
With a tribute to Jesse Lazear, Reed presented his paper “The Etiology of Yellow Fever—An Additional Note” to the Pan-American Medical Congress in Havana in February of 1901. In it, he outlined his experiments with the infected clothing house, the mosquito house and the blood inoculations. The hall was packed as Reed read his paper, and listeners even crowded the doorways to hear the monumental news about a disease that had plagued both Cuba and America for two hundred years.
Reed had a habit of emphasizing important points by raising his voice to a high falsetto note. A student once described Reed’s talent at speaking to a crowd: “As a teacher Dr. Reed always seemed to me to be first of all, master of his theme. His information was so much his own—a part of him, as it were—that when it was given to others it flowed forth with unadulterated naturalness, and sparkled with a keen interest which his charming personalitycould not help but lend it.” That day, Reed’s voice rose and fell as he outlined the objectives and results of the Yellow Fever Board. His voice grew higher as he emphatically explained that the control of the disease would be dependent upon the destruction of mosquitoes and protection against their bites. Two months of experiments in the Infected Clothing Building had not yielded one case of yellow fever. Reed had shown that “things”— clothes, trunks, linens, even corpses—could not transmit yellow fever. The tests conducted in the Infected Mosquito Building demonstrated that exposure to Aedes aegypti mosquitoes carrying yellow fever—and only exposure to those mosquitoes—spread the virus. And the blood inoculations verified that the virus was carried in human blood.
Reed ended his presentation expressing his regret for the fact that the discovery could only be made through human experimentation. He added that James Carroll, who was present that day, had been the first to succumb to the disease. Carroll received a standing ovation.
The applause roared in the auditorium when Reed finished his presentation, and he received handshakes from several Cuban, Spanish, Mexican, South American and North American physicians. The applause continued to echo in the walls of the lecture hall; it spilled into the hallways where people crowded to hear the monumental paper. It resounded like a heavy rainfall, and Reed listened to the gush of praise and congratulations. It was a sound that he had waited for his whole life, and he soaked it up.
It did not last long. Once again, the Washington Post seemed less than