The American Plague - Molly Caldwell Crosby [94]
While Guitéras failed to inoculate successfully against yellow fever, he did inadvertently prove one thing: The virulency of one case of yellow fever is determined by the virulency of another. In other words, strains of yellow fever vary in their deadliness. Clara Maass had been bitten a number of times in the months prior to August 1901. But that month, she and the other two fatal cases received blood from one source labeled Alvarez. The strain from patient Alvarez was apparently more virulent than others. That fact would come as little surprise to doctors who had served during Philadelphia, New Orleans and Memphis epidemics of yellow fever in decades past. Throughout history, yellow fever had swept through cities sometimes causing mild cases, other times killing thousands. For the virus, it was just a matter of fine-tuning.
One week before Clara Maass died, James Carroll returned to Havana to work with Guitéras on the experiments. This time, they would continue the search for the agent in the blood that caused yellow fever. Since Camp Lazear had closed, Carroll set up work in the plain, one-story Las Animas Hospital. Using the Berkefeld filter to catch any bacteria, Carroll passed blood samples through the filter, then injected volunteers. He produced cases of yellow fever. In doing so, Carroll had discovered that the agent that caused yellow fever was a filterable one. It was not bacteria that could be caught when filtered, nor was it a plasmodium, like malaria, that could be seen through the microscope. Though the term virus in its modern-day definition did not yet exist, that is exactly what he had found. James Carroll had isolated the first human virus.
Up to this point, a virus was an unknown entity. The actual word virus is Latin for venom, and that was the general definition. Science recognized that some poison was attacking the body; they just couldn’t find it. Vigilant microbe hunters studied blood smears of ill patients looking for the germ that caused a particular illness. Bacteria of all shapes and sizes had been discovered and named. Malarial parasites had been seen. It made it hard to imagine something even smaller that could be even more deadly.
Following the American Public Health Association meeting in Buffalo, friends and colleagues began suggesting to Reed that he consider the job of surgeon general for the army, which would soon be vacated when Sternberg retired that year. Kean was chief among Reed’s supporters. But the position would not go to Reed; his name was not even on the list of contenders. Too humble to actively seek such a position, Reed would complain in a private letter that he had too much common sense to consider himself in the race. He added, “The Moral of all of this is . . . to make friends wherever you go—political friends, if possible—Never mind about really accomplishing anything.” But the bitterness was short-lived. In the same letter, Reed continued: “But, then, there is another way in which to look at this matter. Instead of simply being satisfied to make friends and draw your pay, it is worth doing your duty to the best of your ability, for duty’s sake; and in doing that while the indolent stand you may accomplish something that will be of real benefit to humanity and worth more than all the high places that could be bestowed by shrewd politicians.”
There was also talk that Reed might receive the new, prestigious award called the Nobel Prize; but, in 1902, it went to Sir Ronald Ross, who demonstrated the link between malaria and mosquitoes. Most people felt certain Reed would be awarded the prize in the future, but that was never to be the case. The Nobel Prize could not be given posthumously.
Strain began to show on Walter Reed; lines etched into his face and his hair grew ashen. He was only fifty-one years old, but seemed to be aging rapidly. Reed spent the summer of 1902 with his