Walter Reed, MD

Abstract

Walter Reed, son of a Methodist minister, was born in 1851. His father sent each of his five sons to the University of Virginia, but in order to preserve family finances, Walter completed his education quickly. He remains the University of Virginia School of Medicine's youngest graduate, receiving his degree at age 18. He pursued further training in New York, but found civilian medicine disillusioning. At age 24, he passed the Army Medical Corps entrance examination and subsequently spent 14 years as an Army surgeon on the American frontier. He treated soldiers, prospectors, and Indians for little, if any, payment. Yearning to become part of the scientific revolution, Reed returned to academia, auditing pathology and bacteriology courses at Johns Hopkins University. He learned the principles of the scientific method and made important contacts during that period of training. The Surgeon General then called him to aid in the definition and resolution of the epidemics of infectious diseases affecting American troops. He presided over the investigative board that refuted the water-borne theory of typhoid fever and identified files, feces, and fomites as the source of this dreaded illness. After his success with this epidemic, he was sent to Cuba to tackle the problem of yellow fever. In approximately 6 months, he was able to disprove a bacterial cause of the illness, establish the mosquito as the likely source, and conduct a controlled trial to successfully confer illness throughthat vector. This information facilitated elimination of a horrific tropical pest. At 51, just one and a half years after his landmark work with yellow fever, he fell victim to appendicitis and died.