The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, The Epidemic That Shaped Our Nation (24 page)

Naturally, Reed’s article received some criticism, especially from those who believed Sanarelli’s germ theory. The
Washington Post,
in particular, was harsh in its opinion of the mosquito hypothesis. In one article, they referred to the Yellow Fever Board, “whoever they may be,” as putting forth a theory that is “the silliest beyond compare.” While the article seems unduly subjective considering the recent connections between malaria and mosquitoes, it also confirmed what Reed had felt all along: That his professional reputation was riding on only one experimentally produced case of yellow fever. Just before leaving Cuba for the Indianapolis presentation, Reed and Kean had met with General Wood to discuss what actions to take when he returned. Kean wrote that Reed stood before the general, “tall, slender, keen and emotional” and convinced Wood with his “earnest and persuasive eloquence of which he was a master” to use $10,000 to fund a camp for further mosquito experiments.

It would be called Camp Lazear.

Wild and uncultivated, a clearing of two acres stood angled steeply between sea and sun. The ground was far enough from highway travel to discourage wayward visitors, and it was well drained and windswept enough to deter unwanted mosquitoes. It was also an area that had never seen yellow fever.

Walter Reed had returned to Cuba on November 5, 1900, and in his absence, he had Agramonte search out a locale for Camp Lazear. Agramonte was the natural choice—he was the only board member present in Cuba at the time, and he had lived there the longest. The land belonged to an ancestral home, 150 years old, called Finca San Jose in Marianao, and it was owned by a friend of Agramonte’s. They would lease part of the property for twenty dollars a month and begin building Camp Lazear. The land also had one other important feature: It was only two miles from the yellow fever hospitals of Quemados and Camp Columbia. If their experiments proved successful, they would need those hospitals.

During construction and the experiments, Reed would often wander over and sit on the front porch belonging to the couple who owned the farm. He told them how he loved Cuba and even talked of taking his wife and daughter Blossom to visit, maybe even moving there once he retired.

While the camp was under construction, Reed turned his attention to building a healthy supply of mosquitoes. Finlay’s earlier samples might not be enough to sustain the experiments, and as cool weather approached, fewer mosquitoes would be available.

Reed picked up where Lazear had left off in his entomological studies, contacting Leland Howard in the U.S. with insect samples and questions. Boxes of paperwork covered Reed’s desk, as did two large leather volumes— 600 pages each—of La Roche’s history of yellow fever, published in 1853. If Reed’s enthusiasm wasn’t immediately contagious among the men, it soon would be. As they sat around tables playing cards or visiting on the veranda in the autumn evenings, Reed would interrupt, “Gentlemen! Listen to what La Roche says about the terrible epidemic in Philadelphia in 1793!” The men would gather in the study and listen to Reed read from mosquito pamphlets and studies. Soon, the hunt for new specimens began. Using large-mouthed cyanide bottles, they collected mosquitoes and studied them beneath a strong hand lens.

One night in mid-November, a tropical storm pounded Cuba. The low sky grew gunmetal gray as heavy winds uprooted trees, tossed tents and shook the wooden buildings. Shutters blew open and papers flew, wet and tattered. Reed’s collection of lab mosquitoes was blown out to sea. When the storm subsided, only a few dry eggs remained, and the experiments were scheduled to begin any day. Colleagues tried to convince Reed that warm weather would return soon enough, and a new supply of mosquitoes would hatch, but Reed persuaded his men to hunt new mosquitoes with him. They searched drainpipes, upturned cans, broken containers and even privy buckets to skim the surface for mosquito larvae, “wigglers,” as they called them. Along the still surface of water, they collected the black, cylinder-shaped eggs, which could be dried or frozen or hatched immediately. Returning to the lab, Reed, Neate and Andrus picked through the findings, separating “wigglers” from eggs and harvesting a whole new batch of the lyre-marked
Aedes aegypti
mosquitoes.

The storm aside, the construction of Camp Lazear was nearly complete. Everything about the camp had to be uncontaminated. Wagons carried new tents and equipment, all in their original packaging, to Camp Lazear. Wooden floors were built where seven tents would be pitched. Personnel were carefully chosen based on their impeccable military records and an interest in experimental medicine. They also had to be in perfect health—all of the volunteers but one were under the age of thirty. The men were then quarantined.

Reed himself designed the most critical buildings for the camp with meticulous care. One would be dedicated to the mosquitoes; the other would be used to disprove once and for all the theory that yellow fever could be transmitted by objects, infected clothes or close contact. The entire compound would be enclosed in a barbed wire fence with a military guard to deter anyone from entering or leaving.

Building No. 1 became known as the “Infected Clothing Building.” Its tongue and groove wooden frame was twenty feet by fourteen feet with glass pane windows and a solid-wood, double-door entry; the windows and door were screened then boarded shut. Every precaution was made to keep the structure free of mosquitoes and sunlight. Three beds stood in the center of the room, surrounded by crates and boxes still sealed shut.

Reed sought out volunteers for the Infected Clothing Building, and the doctor chosen to lead the group was Robert P. Cooke. Six months earlier, Cooke had nearly lost his job thanks to the reprimand by Agramonte and Reed. He had also neglected a potentially explosive epidemic of yellow fever at Pinar del Rio. Now, both Agramonte and Reed watched as Cooke and two other volunteers entered their first experimental building. Though the other two volunteers would receive $100 each, Cooke refused any compensation.

In modern times, it’s hard to understand the mentality that would lead a soldier into knowingly risking his life for the purpose of medicine. Soldiers are trained to fight and defend; if any illness befalls them, it’s considered a cruel and unjust turn of events. But prior to World War II and the introduction of penicillin, soldiers lost their lives to disease far more than bullets. From the time of the American Revolution through World War I, a soldier knew his odds of dying from dysentery, cholera, typhoid, smallpox, influenza or yellow fever were greater than those on the battlefield, so volunteering for human experiments might not seem as much of a psychological departure as it would today. After all, a soldier’s duty is to defense, and many men felt that the greatest threat to the American people lay not in enemy warships or troops, but in disease.

On the evening of November 30, Cooke and the two other men entered Reed’s carefully crafted building and sealed the solid wood door behind them. A single stove stood in the one-room house, and it kept the temperature inside somewhere between 90 and 100 degrees at all times. Impenetrable to light or air, the small room felt like a furnace. The three men began breaking open the crates and boxes left in the center of the room. As they opened the first trunk, the odor was so pungent that the men ran outdoors, hands over their mouths, to keep from retching. After a few minutes, the three men returned and finished unpacking boxes full of soiled sheets, covered in vomit, sweat and feces from the yellow fever ward. They dressed in the filthy clothing that had been worn by dying patients, they covered their cots in sheets stained with black vomit, and then they spent the next twenty nights the same way.

For the mosquito trials, Reed felt less certain about seeking volunteers. It was one thing to ask Cooke and the men to expose themselves to the filth Reed was certain could not transmit yellow fever; it was something else all together to ask men to volunteer for the same experiments that had killed Jesse Lazear and had almost taken James Carroll. The other doctors let it be known that Reed would need volunteers, and then they waited.

Many of the doctors at Camp Columbia knew of John Moran’s situation. Having been honorably discharged from the army that July, Moran worked as a civilian clerk, hoping to save up enough money for medical school. An Irishman who had planned to join the cavalry at the onset of the Spanish-American War, his interest had turned instead to the Hospital Corps. As one contract surgeon told him, “Moran, any man with enough influence can become a captain, but not a doctor.”

Moran was well liked, though considered a little green. When he first arrived in Cuba, the corpsmen made sure to teach the new Irishman some helpful Spanish phrases. “They were words,” he later wrote, “that I could not speak today in the presence of respectable, Spanish-speaking dames and expect to get away with it.”

Moran received around $100 a month for his work as a field clerk under General Fitzhugh Lee and had been allowed to remain at Camp Columbia in spite of his civilian status so that he could save money for school. On his discharge papers, his character was described as “excellent,” his services, “honest and faithful.”

Like many of the men at Camp Columbia, John Moran was also well acquainted with yellow jack. He arrived at work one morning to find the desk next to him empty, only to learn that the other clerk had just died of yellow fever. He had also heard the famous story of Major Peterson, which had shocked the military in Cuba and made the rounds in the American newspapers. When the handsome, young Peterson died of yellow fever, his wife feared that she too might have the fever. Just hours after his death, she pulled a revolver from her purse and shot herself. And, certainly, Moran had also been an admirer of Jesse Lazear, whose loss was still felt, poignantly, throughout the camp.

One day, Dr. Roger P. Ames, a contract surgeon, approached Moran. He knew of Moran’s financial situation and had even suggested Moran consider his own alma mater, Tulane, once he had enough money saved. Ames brought up the subject casually—did Moran know that Major Reed was offering a bonus for men willing to volunteer for his new experiments? The $500 reward could certainly go a long way toward medical school, and he’d be doing Walter Reed a favor. “All right, Doc, I will sleep over it and let you know tomorrow.”

“Neither of us,” Moran later wrote, “gave very much thought to a possible death lurking in the background.”

That night, Moran talked it over with his roommate, Private John R. Kissinger. Moran decided not only to volunteer but to do so without monetary compensation. His mind was made up. Kissinger tried to dissuade Moran from forfeiting the money— especially since he needed it so badly for medical school. They continued to discuss it all through the night until the early hours of morning, when they decided to tell Reed that they would both volunteer. They wanted to tell him as soon as possible, before doubt weakened their resolve, but they thought it best to wait until Reed had dressed for the day and taken breakfast. Then, they made the short walk across camp toward the smell of coffee wafting from the officer’s quarters. Reed met the two men on his porch, “Good morning. What can I do for you?”

In the tense silence, Reed looked at the two strangers—one a private, one dressed in civilian clothes—and waited for the tongue-tied men to speak. When they finally explained the reason for the visit, Moran wrote, “The Major’s surprise was complete and so reflected in his countenance. He never expected such rapid-fire action as confronted him, there and then, in the persons of two human guinea pigs.”

Reed rubbed his palms, one over the other, and was about to answer the men when Kissinger blurted, “That is not all, Sir. We are volunteering without the bonus or money award which we understand you are offering.” Reed looked confused, even concerned.

“That is correct, Major,” added Moran. “We are doing it for medical science.”

Reed quietly told the men that he would gladly accept them for his experiments, and it was later famously recorded that Major Walter Reed touched his cap and said, “I take my hat off to you, gentlemen.” In another version, it was said that Reed remarked, “I salute you.” Both Moran and Kissinger denied that an officer would have said as much to enlisted men, but when Reed’s son, Lawrence, was asked about it years later, he said that it sounded exactly like something his father would have said. Actually, General Lawrence Reed added, “He would have said, ‘Gentlemen, I salute you.’ ”

Reed would describe the moral courage displayed by Kissinger as unsurpassed in the annals of the army of the United States. And in a written recommendation for Moran, Reed would write, “A man who volunteered, as he did, without hope of any pecuniary reward, but solely in the interests of humanity and medical science, to enter a building purposely infected with yellow fever . . . should need no word of recommendation from any one.”

Other volunteers for the experiments were acquired by less noble means. Agramonte, the only board member who could speak Spanish, was sent to the Immigration Station across the Bay of Havana for recruits. He hired roughly ten newly arrived immigrants at a time to work as day laborers at Camp Lazear. Straight off the boats, the immigrants were delighted to find easy work picking up stones in a field. They were given bountiful meals and tents to sleep in. Surely, they even observed with appreciation the folds of mosquito netting placed thoughtfully over their beds. They may or may not have noticed the casual, but persistent questioning that came from the officers in the camp: Where did their families originate, had they ever lived in Cuba or the tropics before, had they contracted any diseases—any fevers—since their recent arrival? Did they have a wife or children dependent upon them? If any of the immigrants were underage or had previously lived in the tropics, they were sent away from the camp immediately. At last, when the immigrants had grown comfortable to this life at Camp Lazear, the idea of the experiment was put before them. If the men agreed, they would receive $100 in gold and another $100 if they caught yellow fever, in which case they would be given the best possible care. “Needless to say,” wrote Agramonte, “no reference was made to any possible funeral expenses.”