262 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



WALTEE EEED.* 



BY MAJOR WALTER D. McCAW, 

 SURGEON U. S. ARMY. 



TT is given to but few scientific men to lay bare a secret of nature 

 -L materially affecting the prosperity of nations, and the lives, for- 

 tunes and happiness of thousands. Fewer still succeed in so quickly 

 convincing brother scientists and men in authority of the truth of 

 their discoveries that their own eyes behold the glorious result of their 

 labor. Of the fifty-one years of Walter Eeed's industrious, blameless 

 life, twelve only were spent in the study of the special branch of science 

 in which he became famous, but his name now stands with those of 

 Jenner, Lister and Morton, as among the benefactors of humanity. 



Walter Eeed was born in Gloucester County, Virginia, September 

 13, 1851, the son of the Eev. Lemuel Sutton Eeed and Pharaba White, 

 his wife. The circumstances of his family were modest, and some of 

 the years of his boyhood were spent in a much troubled section of the 

 south during the great civil war. He acquired, however, a good pre- 

 liminary education, and at an age when most boys are still in the 

 schoolroom, he began the study of medicine at the University of Vir- 

 ginia, graduating as M.D. in 1868, when only seventeen years old. 

 A second medical degree was received later from Bellevue Medical 

 College, New York, and then came terms of service in the Brooklyn 

 City Hospital, and the City Hospital, Blackwell's Island. Before the 

 age of twenty-one, Eeed was a district physician in New York City, 

 and at twenty-two one of the five inspectors of the Board of Health 

 of Brooklyn. 



He entered the army of the United States as assistant surgeon 

 with the rank of first lieutenant, in 1875, and for the next eighteen 

 years, with the usual varying fortunes of a young medical officer of 

 the army, he served in Arizona, Nebraska, Dakota and in the southern 

 and eastern states. According to the exigencies of the service he was 

 moved frequently from station to station, everywhere recognized by men 

 of his own age as a charming and sympathetic companion, and by older 

 officers as an earnest and intelligent physician, whose industry, fidelity 

 to duty, and singularly clear judgment, gave brilliant promise for the 

 future. In the poor cabins and dugouts of the pioneers in the sparsely 

 settled districts where he served his flag, Eeed was ever a messenger 

 of healing and comfort. At that time army posts on the frontier were 



* A memoir, published by the Walter Reed Memorial Association. Con- 

 tributions to the memorial fund may be sent to the treasurer, Mr. Chas J. Bell, 

 President American Security and Trust Co., Washington, D. C. 



