Walter Reed (Physician)
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This article is about the U.S. army surgeon. Otherwise, see Walter Reed (disambiguation).
Major Walter Reed, M.D., (September 13 1851 - November 23 1902) was a U.S. Army physician who in 1900 led the team which confirmed the theory (first set forth in 1881 by Cuban doctor/scientist Carlos Finlay) that yellow fever is transmitted by mosquitoes, rather than by direct contact. This insight opened entire new fields of epidemiology and biomedicine and most immediately allowed the resumption and completion of work on the Panama Canal (1904-14) by the United States.
[edit] Biography
Walter Reed was born and raised in Belroi, an unincorporated community in Gloucester County in eastern Virginia's Middle Peninsula region to Lemuel Sutton Reed (a Methodist minister) and Pharaba White. Soon after graduation from the University of Virginia, Reed became a parasitologist with the US Army in a time of great advances in medicine due to widespread acceptance of Louis Pasteur's germ theory of disease as well as the methods of studying bacteria developed by Robert Koch. Reed worked closely with George Miller Sternberg, the Army Surgeon General, who was one of the founders of bacteriology.
Yellow fever became a problem for the Army during the Spanish American War, when the disease felled thousands of soldiers in Cuba. In May 1900, Reed, a major, was appointed president of a board "to study infectious diseases in Cuba paying particular attention to yellow fever." This board eventually confirmed both the transmission by mosquitoes and disproved the common belief that yellow fever could be transmitted by clothing and bedding soiled by the body fluids and excrement of yellow fever sufferers - articles known as fomites.
The risky but fruitful research work was done with human volunteers, including some of the medical personnel such as Clara Maass and Jesse William Lazear who allowed themselves to be deliberately infected. The research work with the disease under Reed's leadership was largely responsible for stemming the mortality rates from yellow fever during the building of the Panama Canal, something that had confounded the French attempt to build in that region only 30 years earlier.
After this work, Reed resumed his position as professor of bacteriology in the Army Medical School, and as professor of pathology and bacteriology at the George Washington University Medical School. His health had been in decline following an appendectomy, and in 1902, he died of peritonitis, aged 51.
He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
[edit] Legacy
Reed's breakthrough in yellow fever research is widely considered a milestone in biomedicine, opening new vistas of research and humanitarianism.
- Walter Reed General Hospital (WRGH), Washington, D.C. was opened on May 1 1909, seven years after his death.
- Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC) opened in 1977 as the successor to WRGH; it is the world-wide tertiary care medical center for the U.S. Army and is utilized by congressmen and presidents.
- Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAMC), near Washington, DC, is the largest biomedical research facility administered by the DoD.
- Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, a new hospital complex to be constructed on the grounds of the National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland by 2011.
- Walter Reed Medal (1929 to present) was awarded posthumously to Reed for his yellow fever work.
- Walter Reed Middle School, North Hollywood, California is named in Reed's honor.
- Reed was portrayed dramatically by actor Lewis Stone in a 1938 Hollywood movie, Yellow Jack (from a 1934 play). The same storyline was again presented in television episodes (both titled “Yellow Jack”) of Celanese Theatre (1952) and of Producers' Showcase (1955), in the latter of which Reed was portrayed by actor Broderick Crawford.
- A song, "Walter Reed", was penned by Michael Penn and tells of a soldier's desire to be taken to him.
- PBS's American Experience series broadcast a 2006 episode, The Great Fever, on the Reed yellow fever campaign
