The American Plague - Molly Caldwell Crosby [96]
In spite of excellent medical care, the infection spread, peritonitis developed, and on November 23, 1902, Walter Reed died. All of the doctors present agreed that his health, weakened by the stress of his work in Cuba, had led to a fatal infection. Truby even believed that Reed unknowingly suffered from appendicitis during his work in Cuba, where Reed watched his diet vigilantly and suffered from stomach upsets.
It rained on Tuesday morning, November 25, when Reed was buried. The Potomac River blurred in the white haze, and the town houses of Dupont Circle and Georgetown cast tall shadows against the sidewalks. Clouds and rain cloaked the 100-foot spire of St. Thomas Episcopal Church. The Gothic stone building stood on Church Street, near Dupont Circle, and just a few blocks from the Reed’s home. The church was full of military men, all in uniform, including Albert Truby. Truby, who had been given his first professional opportunity by Reed, would one day rise in ranks to become brigadier general and the commander of the Walter Reed Army Institute. He watched as the guests filed in through the wrought-iron and glass doors of the church trailed by gusts of wind and golden leaves. Dr. William Welch, Reed’s mentor and professor, was there, as was Dr. William Osler, Dr. Simon Flexner and Secretary of War Elihu Root. William Randolph Kean was one of his pallbearers. Emilie was so distraught, she could not attend. And Reed’s son, Lawrence, was stationed in the Philippines at the time. Lawrence Reed received only a wire with the news: Your father died today. It was two months before he heard any more details; it would have cost additional money for the army to include more in the message.
Following the service, Reed was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, and his epitaph was taken from the recent remarks of the president of Harvard University: “He gave to man control over that dreadful scourge Yellow Fever.”
Kean described his death as like the loss of a brother. And Dr. William Welch said of Reed: “Doctor Reed’s researches in yellow fever are by far the most important contributions to science which have ever come from any army surgeon. In my judgment they are the most valuable contributions to medicine and public hygiene which have ever been made in this country with the exception of the discovery of anesthesia.”
Theodore Roosevelt, then president of the United States, remarked: “Major Reed’s part in the experiments which resulted in teaching us how to cope with yellow fever was such as to render mankind his debtor, and this nation should in some proper fashion bear witness to this fact.”
Shortly after his death, a Walter Reed Memorial Association was established to raise funds for Emilie and Blossom Reed, as well as to finance a monument in Reed’s honor. Contributions were made by Alexander Graham Bell, John D. Rockefeller, John P. Morgan, George M. Sternberg, as well as William Welch, Carlos Finlay and William Gorgas.
CHAPTER 23
The Mosquito
It would not take long for the mosquito theory to prove true. After the Yellow Fever Board left Cuba at the turn of the century, Major William C. Gorgas turned his focus to eradicating the Aedes aegypti mosquito in Havana, and later Panama, basing his work on Reed’s findings. If science could not yet conquer the virus, man would at least destroy its accomplice.
Gorgas, a southerner who had been rejected from West Point, was known by a number of women as “the gorgeous doctor”