The American Plague - Molly Caldwell Crosby [93]
Reed rebuffed, “Will Dr. Wasdin please tell me in the transmission of malaria by the bite of the mosquito, whether that is also simply a laboratory disease?”
The familiar issue of quarantine battles ensued, especially among Wasdin and doctors from New Orleans, who had a hard time letting go of the theory that yellow fever could also be spread by infected clothing or bedding. With the New Orleans doctors, Reed was understanding. A city so threatened by yellow fever would approach any new study with some skepticism. For Wasdin, Reed had less patience.
“I was going to reach Dr. Wasdin’s objections in a little while, but perhaps I had better answer him now . . . It seems to me a waste of time, with all due respect to Dr. Wasdin, who has labored so hard over this problem, to longer consider this bacillus as the cause of yellow fever.”
The meetings finally concluded with a resolution for President McKinley, “That the American Public Health Association has received with deep sorrow the intelligence of the sudden and tragic death of the beloved President of the United States . . . in President McKinley we recognize the highest type of modern civilization, a patriotic citizen, a Christian gentleman, and a sagacious and enlightened statesman.”
In the coming months, Wasdin began showing signs of mental illness and was eventually committed to an asylum where he died.
Reed’s work also spawned new studies on yellow fever in Cuba. Dr. Juan Guitéras was attempting to produce immunity against yellow fever through mild cases. “He was probably the first medical authority to advance the theory that Cuban children were not born immune to yellow fever but acquired immunity by mild, unrecognized attacks in childhood,” wrote Albert Truby.
Guitéras hoped that by infecting people with mild, nonfatal cases of yellow fever, they would be inoculated against it for life. As human cells fall under possession of a virus, the human body mounts a defense, building antibodies. Cells encounter a strange virus and its jagged edges in the bloodstream and create antibodies to attack the virus—the same way we shave and carve a metal key to fit a corresponding lock. But in this case, the lock of the antibody fits neatly against the key of the virus. As the human body struggles to create enough antibodies to lock onto and conquer the virus, the illness takes its course. The host may survive or it may die in the meantime, either from the symptoms of the virus or the body’s own immune response. In many viruses, one encounter with the disease produces a lifelong immunity. Those antibodies are always present, and if the person comes in contact with the virus again, the antibodies render the virus useless before it can do any damage.
Guitéras also believed that the success Walter Reed enjoyed was the result of mild cases of the fever, which could be produced by only one bite from a mosquito rather than a series of bites. Reed didn’t believe that to be the case and wrote to a friend: “I see that Finlay and Guitéras continue to harp on the harmlessness of a single mosquito’s bite, drawing the conclusion that ordinarily Y.F. is due to multiple bites. After some poor devil dies, they may change their minds.”
In what was known as “Guitéras Block” in the Las Animas Hospital, Guitéras inoculated ten volunteers using the same procedures Reed had used at Camp Lazear. As usual, yellow fever took on a life of its own. Guitéras’s cases were not as lucky as Reed’s and three of the volunteers died. One, a young American nurse named Clara Maass, died of yellow fever on August 24, exactly one year since Carroll and Lazear had started their ill-fated experiments with mosquitoes. Maass had volunteered for the experiments in hopes that she would develop immunity, which would enable her to be a more effective nurse. Though she was bitten on four different occasions, the fifth proved fatal.
Reed wrote of their failure, “I was very, very sorry to hear of