WALTER REED, 551 



and member of examining; hoards, occupied miicli of the time that 

 lie would otherwise have spent in his laboratory. Here a^ain 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 vohniteer 

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

 Major Reed was selected as the head of a board to study the causa- 

 tion and spread of the disease. This innnense 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 

 (iovernment, is a monumental work which must always serve as 

 a basis for future study of the epidemiology of typhoid fever. 



The most original and valuable work of the board is the proof 

 that the infection of typhoid fever is spread in camps by the com- 

 mon fly and by contact with i^atients and infected articles — clothing, 

 tentage, and utensils — as Avell as by contaminated drinking water. 



In June, 1900, JNIajor Reed Avas sent to Cuba as president of a board 

 to study the infectious diseases of the country, but more especially yel- 

 low fever. Associated with him were Acting Asst. Surgs. James Car- 

 roll, Jesse W. Lazear, and A. Agramonte. 



At this time the American authorities in Cuba had for a year and 

 a half endeavored to diminish the disease and mortality of the Cuban 

 towns by general sanitary work, but while the health of the popula- 

 tion showed distinct improvement and the mortality had greatly 

 diminished, yellow fever apparently had been entirely unaft'ected by 

 these measures. In fact, owing to the large number of nonimmune 

 foreigners, the disease was more frequent than usual in Habana and 

 in Quemados, near the camp of American troops, and many valuable 

 lives of American officers and soldiers had been lost. 



Reed was convinced from the first that general sanitary measures 

 alone would not check the disease, but that its transmission was 

 probably due to an insect. 



The fact that malarial fever, caused by an animal parasite in the 

 blood, is transmitted from man to man through the agency of cer- 

 tain mosquitoes had been recently accepted by the scientific world; 

 also, several years before, Dr. Carlos Finlay, of ITabana. had ad- 

 vanced the theory that a mosquito conveyed the unknown cause of 

 yellow fever, but did not succeed in demonstrating the truth of his 

 theory. 



Dr. II. R. Carter, of the INIarine-IIospital vS(>i'\ict>, had written a 

 paper showing that although the period of incubation of yellow 

 fever was only five days, yet a house to which a patient was carried 

 did not become infected for from fifteen to twenty days. 



To Reed's mind this indicated that the unknown infectiv^c agent has 



