The American Plague - Molly Caldwell Crosby [92]
CHAPTER 22
Retribution
On September 5, 1901, Walter Reed was given orders to proceed to Buffalo, New York, as the officer representing the Medical Department of the Army at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association, where the majority of the discussion would focus on yellow fever. But the next two weeks would prove to be dark ones.
President William McKinley, reelected by even greater numbers thanks to the popularity of the Spanish-American War and Theodore Roosevelt as a running mate, took a trip through the West, ending in Buffalo, New York. His speech to the Pan-American Exposition on September 5 had attracted 50,000 people, and on the next day, September 6, 1901, McKinley made his way through the exposition crowds to the Temple of Music. In spite of the Secret Service, throngs of people approached the president, who patted men on the shoulder, shook hands and greeted bystanders. One, named Leon Czolgosz, pushed his way through the crowd. The Secret Service noticed a handkerchief in his hand, but by then, Czolgosz was within two feet of the president. McKinley smiled at the man and reached out his hand just in time to receive two revolver shots, one in his chest, and one in his abdomen. McKinley reeled from the shots, took a few steps backward and sat down in a chair before he was rushed to a hospital, and later, to the private home of John Milburn. Doctors operated on the president, but one week later, on September 14, he died from infection.
Two days later, on September 16, Walter Reed sat in the auditorium and listened to the president of the American Public Health Association begin the meeting with an honorary mention of both his friend Jesse Lazear and the engineer George Waring, who had invented the Memphis sewer system so many years ago and who died of yellow fever after a sanitation trip to Havana.
The doctors present that day were distracted by the death of President McKinley, but important matters were at hand, and focus quickly shifted to a discussion of Walter Reed’s yellow fever study.
“I wish briefly to add my words of congratulation to those of the whole scientific world in praise of Dr. Reed and his colleagues, who, in my opinion, have given us a work which has not been equaled, as far as its benefits to the public health are concerned, since Jenner gave us vaccinia,” gushed one doctor.
Still, there were those present who opposed the success of the Reed Commission, as it was becoming known. Eugene Wasdin, a longtime champion of Sanarelli bacteria, was also present. Having been on the board appointed by the president to confirm the Sanarelli bacteria in Havana, he had been incensed by the contradictoryfindings of Agramonte, then by the very public discovery of Reed’s Yellow Fever Board. Wasdin must have felt strongly about the subject for he arrived from the bedside of McKinley; he had been the anesthesiologist and an attending physician for the president. Worse, rumors of dissension among McKinley’s doctors now arose. Wasdin believed undoubtedly that the president’s infection was the result of a poisoned bullet, and he said as much in a New York Times article. His theory would prove to be the wrong one. Amid this very public stress, he attended the annual meeting for the Public Health Association, primarily to dispute Walter Reed.
“The fact that Dr. Reed states that the organism has not yet been discovered does not make that true. The organism has been discovered, and it is not inconsistent with Dr. Reed’s demonstration of the transmission of the disease by the mosquito, to accept the organism of Sanarelli as the cause of yellow fever . . . although Dr. Reed has demonstrated to my mind that the disease may thus be transmitted, it is not the only way by which we can contract the disease, and when