The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, The Epidemic That Shaped Our Nation (38 page)

For the sake of pacing, I streamlined some of the details about the experiments in November, December and January. The facts are all there, but I chose not to outline every single experiment performed during that three-month period. To recreate the experiments, I relied on several different sources. Philip S. Hench provided a “Summary of Research,” written on August 20, 1940, which I used as a general guideline. I also relied on the personal accounts written by Kissinger, Moran and Truby. Other details came out in original letters: One was written by Hench to Truby, January 7, 1941, and the other was a letter Reed wrote to Truby on December 10, 1900. Reed’s quote about the importance of these discoveries came from his letter to Emilie on December 9, 1900. An excerpt of that letter was provided by Blossom Reed in her “Biographical Sketch,” written for Hench.

The rumors about the bleached bones of Walter Reed’s yellow fever volunteers came from Bean’s book, as well as a letter Reed wrote to Emilie.

In developing the scene where Walter Reed walks through the streets of Havana on his way to a banquet on December 22, 1900, I used personal experience, old photographs and Hench’s notes. It was December when I visited Havana, so I had the opportunity to see huge poinsettia bushes in bloom and Christmas decorations around the city. I visited Parque Central, the Hotel Inglaterra and the site of what used to be Old Delmonico’s. In Hotel Inglaterra, they have an old print of the area from 1904. From the sketch, I took details of the park as it appeared in 1900, as well as the Tacón theater, which is now the beautiful Gran Teatro. The building where the restaurant stood in 1900 is now abandoned, but I was still able to climb the staircase and study details about the architecture. Details about the banquet itself came from a speech given by Hench on December 3, 1952, entitled, “The Historic Role of the Finca San Jose and Camp Lazear in the Conquest of Yellow Fever by Carlos Finlay, Walter Reed and Their Associates.” Information about Finlay’s career after the Reed experiments—the fact that he was nominated for the Nobel Prize seven different times—came from the official website for the Nobel Prize, which lists past nominees and winners.

Carroll’s letter to Jennie is held in the Carroll Box, as part of the Hench collection at the University of Virginia. The description of the Christmas party, the makeshift mosquito and the poem for Reed came from letters he wrote to Emilie on December 25 and 26, 1900.

Walter Reed’s original letter to Emilie on New Year’s Eve is part of the Philip S. Hench Walter Reed Collection at the University of Virginia.

Details surrounding the blood inoculations came from two main sources: Truby provided some background information in his memoir, but the majority of the chapter came from John H. Andrus’s “I Became a Guinea Pig,” held in the Hench collection.

Instructions from the surgeon general came from letters exchanged between Sternberg and Reed in December 1900.

The description of Roger Post Ames was taken from Lambert’s account, as well as Paul Tate’s “Essay: Roger Post Ames,” written for Hench in 1954.

Reed’s letter to Sternberg expressing his concern for Andrus was written on January 31, 1901. Excerpts from that letter appear in Andrus’s own account, as well as the biography
George M. Sternberg.

The account of Reed’s presentation to the Pan-American Medical Congress in Havana came from his own descriptions in family letters submitted to the Philip S. Hench collection by Blossom Reed.

The remark about Reed’s voice rising to a falsetto note when he emphasized important points was taken from Hench’s interview with Lawrence Reed on November 21, 1946. The quote about Reed as a teacher came from Captain J. Hamilton Stone’s remarks in Kelly’s book
Walter Reed.

The
Washington Post
quote was from a clipping dated February 11, 1901, held in the Hench collection.

Walter Reed was given military orders to report to Buffalo, New York, on September 5, 1901. Those original orders are held in the Philip S. Hench Walter Reed Collection.

The account of McKinley’s assassination came from a
New York Times
article published on September 7, 1901. The facts of the article were also checked against
Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Proceedings from the 1901 American Public Health Association meeting are held in the Hench collection under the title
Public Health Papers and Reports, Volume XXVII, Presented at the Twenty-ninth Annual Meeting of the American Public Health Association, Buffalo, NY, September 16-20, 1901.

The information about Wasdin’s theory of a poisoned bullet came from a
New York Times
article dated September 16, 1901.

Reed’s opinion of the Guitéras experiments came from a letter written by Reed to Gorgas, May 23, 1901. The letter is held in the Walter Reed Papers at the National Library of Medicine. Reed’s disappointment in hearing about the deaths resulting from the Guitéras experiments was found in another letter to Gorgas, dated September 2, 1901, also held at the National Library of Medicine.

The account of Clara Maass’s death during the experiments came from Philip S. Hench’s personal notes, as well as a
New York Times
article published on August 25, 1901. James Carroll’s experiments passing blood through the Berkefeld filter were outlined in his
Report to the Surgeon General,
August 18, 1906, held in the Hench collection.

Reed’s frustration in being passed over for surgeon general, as well as his statements about doing something for the real benefit of humanity, were expressed in a letter to Gorgas on July 21, 1902. The letter is part of the Walter Reed Papers at the National Library of Medicine.

The description of Keewaydin and the inscription above the fireplace was relayed in a “Biographical Sketch of Walter Reed” written by Emilie Lawrence Reed, held in the Hench collection.

The quote about Reed’s failing health and his frustration over having persons in high authority rob him of his just fame was taken from a letter from Henry Hurd, a friend of Reed’s, to Caroline Latimer on February 11, 1905. The letter can be found in the Hench collection. A similar reference, though with slightly different wording, can be found in Kelly’s book.

The statements by George M. Sternberg appeared in the July 1901
Popular Science Monthly.
Reed’s anger at these remarks was expressed in a letter to Gorgas dated July 27, 1901, and held at the National Library of Medicine. Sternberg’s letter requesting a promotion to major general was dated January 25, 1901, and is held in the Sternberg papers at the National Library of Medicine.

The description of Reed’s final days and illness came from Emilie Lawrence Reed in notes held in the Hench collection, as well as “Notes on Reed and Carroll,” written by Philip S. Hench on January 10, 1942. Additional details were found in the Walter Reed Papers at the National Library of Medicine. The account of Reed’s death was taken from three sources: Kean’s letter to Howard Kelly on March 25, 1901, William Borden’s letter to Howard Kelly on March 16, 1905, and the
Report: History of Doctor Walter Reed’s Illness from Appendicitis
by William Borden, 1903. All three are held in the National Library of Medicine.

Details of Reed’s funeral were taken from Kean’s letter to Howard Kelly on March 25, 1901, Truby’s recollection, Hench’s interview with Lawrence and Blossom Reed on November 21, 1946, and a
Biographical Sketch: Life and Letters of Dr. Walter Reed by His
Daughter.
Welch’s remarks were found in the
Message from the President of the United States Transmitting Certain Papers in regard to Experiments Conducted for the Purpose of Coping with Yellow Fever,
by Theodore Roosevelt, December 5, 1906. Roosevelt’s quote about Reed’s contribution to the betterment of mankind came from Senate Document No. 10, Fifty-ninth Congress. All of the above are held in the Hench collection.

The list of names who contributed to the Walter Reed Memorial Association were found in Writer and Pierce’s
Yellow Jack
and Bean’s
Walter Reed.

Biographical information about Major William C. Gorgas came from Greer Williams’s book
The Plague Hunters,
as well as
William Crawford Gorgas: His Life and Work.

In an interview with an anonymous source in Havana, I confirmed that the same method used in 1900 for monitoring mosquitoes is still in use today.

The introductory quote for Part IV was found in T. P. Monath’s “Yellow Fever: An Update,” published in
Lancet Infectious Disease,
2001.

The account of Tom McCullough’s death from yellow fever came from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: “Fatal Yellow Fever in a Traveler Returning from Amazonas, Brazil, 2002,”
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
I also consulted another article, “Fatal Yellow Fever in a Traveler Returning from Venezuela, 1999,” in the
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report
for information about similar cases. Some of the more personal details about McCullough’s hospital stay and death were taken from two articles in the Corpus Christi
Caller-Times,
March 27, 2002, and May 14, 2004.

To describe what would happen in the case of an epidemic in the United States, I followed the CDC’s “Response to an Epidemic of Yellow Fever,” published in November 2005 specifically for Africa and the Americas. In the report, the CDC outlines the response of field investigators, armed forces, border officials, medical personnel, educational campaigns and vaccine usage.

For additional information about yellow fever vaccine production and stockpiling, I consulted the WHO’s “State of the World’s Vaccines and Immunizations” and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization. Prior to 2002, there was a global shortage of the yellow fever vaccine due to the lack of funds and too few labs producing the vaccine. Since then, the GAVI, with help from the Vaccine Fund, has been able to keep stockpiles of six million vaccines in the case of an epidemic, as well as an additional six million for yearly routine use in African and South American countries where yellow fever is endemic. According to the WHO report, there are four main manufacturers of the yellow fever vaccine, with a total global production capacity of 270 million.

Character development of Adrian Stokes came primarily from Greer Williams’s
The Plague Killers,
written in 1969. Some additional information about Stokes, as well as some of the details about the Rockefeller compound in Yaba, were found in Charles Bryan’s
A Most Satisfactory Man: The Story of Theodore Brevard Hayne, Last Martyr of Yellow Fever.

Descriptions of the Rockefeller Foundation were gathered from Williams’s book and the website for the Rockefeller Foundation. John M. Barry’s
Influenza
also provided some material about the historical significance of the Rockefeller Institute and Rockefeller Foundation.

The two quotes cited in this chapter were taken from Laurie Garrett’s
The Coming Plague,
written in 1994, and Paul De Kruif’s
Microbe Hunters,
written in 1926.

Biographical information about Max Theiler and his work with the 17-D yellow fever vaccine came from Greer Williams’s books
The Virus Hunters
and
The Plague Killers.
Williams was a contemporary of Theiler and was able to interview him personally for his book.

The majority of updated information about yellow fever was taken from the World Health Organization.

Additional information about the attempts to eradicate
Aedes aegypti
from the United States was found in Andrew Spielman and Michael D’Antonio’s book
Mosquito.
The quote about America going to war with Spain, in part, because of yellow fever was taken from their book.

Information about the Asian tiger mosquito and its discovery in Memphis came from Paul Reiter and Richard Darsie’s “Aedes Albopictus in Memphis, Tennessee (USA): An Achievement of Modern Transportation,” published in
Mosquito News,
1984. Reiter was the entomologist who found the tiger mosquito in Memphis, TN. Additional details came from Gary Taubes’s “Tales of a Bloodsucker—Asian Tiger Mosquitoes,” published in
Discover,
July 1998.

The recent study about the proteins on the surface of the yellow fever virus was published in an article in
Virology,
July 5, 2005. The study of the way a flavivirus interacts with interferon during an immune response was published in the
Journal of Virology,
September 2005.

The quote regarding
A. aegypti
mosquitoes established in urban areas was taken from the article “Yellow Fever: A Decade of Re-emergence,” by S. E. Robertson, et al, the
Journal of the American Medical Association,
1996.

The majority of the descriptions of Elmwood were based on several visits there to look through their historical collections and an interview with superintendent Sunny Handback just before he retired in November 2005. The reference to the terms
burial
and
cemetery
were taken from the book
Elmwood: In the Shadow of Elms.
I also read through Elmwood’s ledger of burials for 1878-1879.

Selected Bibliography

The Jefferson Randolph Kean Papers

The Philip S. Hench Walter Reed Yellow Fever Collection