The American Plague - Molly Caldwell Crosby [99]
The redbrick hospital, complete with white columns and a fountain, originally held only 80 beds. When World War I broke out, that number jumped to 2,500. Today, the hospital admits close to 16,000 patients a year. Eventually, the center required more space and now has buildings in three different states, though the original hospital still stands in the District of Columbia. But not for long. The Walter Reed Army Medical Center is scheduled to close its doors for good by 2011, just over a century after it first opened. It will be combined with the Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. Walter Reed’s name will live on, however; the new campus will be called the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
PART FOUR
United States, Present Day
In recent years, popular attention has been drawn to . . .
Ebola as the most frightening emerging infection of humankind.
However, patients with yellow fever suffer as terrifying
and untreatable a clinical disease, and yellow fever is
responsible for 1000-fold more illness and death than Ebola.
—Lancet Infectious Disease, 2001
CHAPTER 24
Epidemic
It was March 10, 2002, when Tom McCullough checked into the emergency room in Corpus Christi, Texas. He had been suffering for four days from cramping, abdominal pain and severe headache. Then, he developed a fever approaching 103 degrees. The doctors in the ER thought it could be rickettsial disease, a term that covers a number of infections caused by vectors like ticks, fleas or contact with animals. Most rickettsia can be controlled with antibiotics, so the doctors prescribed just that and released him from the hospital. Two days later, he was back again, this time with intractable vomiting. McCullough had been a healthy, forty-seven-year-old man, but he now appeared weak and febrile. He repeatedly asked his wife, “What is happening to me?”
A series of tests were performed, and he was treated for malaria though his blood test proved negative. McCullough developed anemia, his blood would not clot, and his kidneys and liver failed. He went into shock and developed seizures. He bled uncontrollably from the sites of his needle punctures. Tom McCullough died on March 15—leaving a wife and six children still wondering why.
McCullough’s illness and death were reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, which began their own series of tests looking for dengue, St. Louis encephalitis, spotted fever, leptospirosis, Machupo virus and yellow fever—all viruses known to exist in South America. McCullough, it had been reported to the CDC, had just returned from a week-long fishing trip for peacock bass on Brazil’s Rio Negro. The brochure for the trip read, We do not suggest any inoculations of any kind for this trip . . . But to make sure you are worry free, consult with your personal physician.
It would seem that some vicious new virus had taken hold of Tom McCullough; instead it was an ancient one. One hundred years ago, doctors would have known immediately what killed him, but modern medicine takes longer. Today, there is a wealth of illnesses known to be caused by insect vectors of all types. There are antibiotics and vaccines to fight disease, and still, this fever seemed to defy contemporary medicine. At last, the autopsy showed antibodies to the yellow fever virus—McCullough’s internal struggle against a virus rapidly taking hold of his body. The CDC had reason to be concerned; McCullough was the third death from yellow fever since 1996, all three originating from trips to