WALTER REED. 263 



usually remote and with small garrisons. The young medical officer, 

 generally the only one at the station, was called upon by the settlers 

 for miles around. Without help, and with only such instruments and 

 medicines as could be hastily stuffed in his saddle-bag, he was sum- 

 moned to attend a fractured thigh, a child choking with diphtheria, or, 

 most trying of all, a complicated child-birth. 



Such experience schools well in self-reliance, and in the formation 

 of quick and accurate observation. For a man like Eeed, already an 

 earnest student, no better preparation could perhaps have been had. 

 His earlier army service must have singularly tended to develop in him 

 the very qualities most necessary to his final success. To the end of 

 his life it was noticeable that even when he had long given up the 

 practice of medicine for the work of the laboratory, he was, neverthe- 

 less, unexcelled at the bedside for rapid unerring diagnosis and sound 

 judgment in treatment. So also were the series of experiments which 

 robbed yellow fever of its terrors especially remarkable for simplicity, 

 accuracy and completeness, or they never would have so quickly con- 

 vinced the world of their truth. Too much reverence for accepted 

 teachings, and too little experience in grappling with difficulties unas- 

 sisted, and they might never have been conceived or carried out. 



In 1890, he was assigned to duty in Baltimore and remained there 

 over a year. Here he had the great advantage of working in the labora- 

 tories of Johns Hopkins University and the happiness of winning the 

 close friendship of his distinguished teacher, Professor William H. 

 Welch. 



In 1893 Eeed was promoted surgeon with the rank of major, and 

 in the same year was detailed in Washington as curator of the Army 

 Medical Museum and professor of bacteriology at the newly organized 

 Army Medical School. Here he worked industriously at his specialty 

 and wrote many valuable monographs, all characterized by accuracy 

 and originality. His excellent judgment made him especially valuable 

 in investigating the causes of epidemic diseases at military posts and 

 in making sanitary inspections. He was, therefore, frequently selected 

 for such work, which, with his duties as teacher and member of exam- 

 ining boards, occupied much of the time that he would otherwise have 

 spent in his laboratory. Here, again, it seems that duties which must 

 often have been irksome were specially fitting him for his culminating 

 work. 



During the Spanish-American war the camps of the volunteer 

 troops in the United States were devastated by typhoid fever, and 

 Major Eeed was selected as the head of a board to study the causation 

 and spread of the disease. This immense task occupied more than a 

 year's time. With the utmost patience and accuracy the details of 

 hundreds of individual cases were grouped and studied. The report 

 of the commission, now in course of publication by the government, is 

 a monumental work which must alwavs serve as a basis for future studv 



