Happy Birthday, Walter Reed

US #877 from the Famous American Scientists issue. Click image to order.

Major Walter Reed, M.D., was born on September 13, 1851, in Belroi, Gloucester County, Virginia. 

Reed spent his childhood in Murfreesboro, North Carolina with his mother and her family while his father, a traveling Methodist minister, went on speaking tours.  Reed went on to attend the University of Virginia and received his M.D. degree.  He did this two months before his 18th birthday, making him the youngest-ever recipient of that degree from that university.

Reed went on to earn a second M.D. from New York University’s Bellevue Hospital Medical College in 1870.  He then worked for the New York Board of Health until 1875.  Unhappy with his position, he decided to join the US Army Medical Corps.  After passing a 30-hour examination, he was enlisted to the medical corps as an assistant surgeon. 

US #877 – Classic First Day Cover. Click image to order.

Reed spent the next 16 years at various outposts taking care of American military troops and their families as well as Native American tribes.  At one point he cared for several hundred Apaches, including Geronimo.  Working in these outposts, Reed witnessed unsanitary conditions and decided to study pathology and bacteriology as well. 

Reed went on to join the staff of the George Washington University School of Medicine and the Army Medical School in Washington, DC, in 1893.  There he served as professor of Bacteriology and Clinical Microscopy.  In addition to teaching, he also worked on medical research projects and curated the Army Medical Museum.  

Item #81869 – Reed commemorative cover. Click image to order.

In 1896, Reed earned significant recognition for his work as a medical investigator.  At the time, enlisted men near the Potomac River were inflicted with yellow fever.  Some thought it was from drinking the river water.  But Reed discovered it was because they had been hiking through the local swampy woods at night. 

Reed was then dispatched to Cuba to investigate the typhoid fever epidemic among US Army soldiers fighting in the Spanish-American War.  His studies showed that it was the unsanitary conditions, especially in the field hospitals, that spread the infection.

US #2087 honors the field of health research. Click image to order.

In 1900, Reed returned to Cuba to study tropical diseases.  Through his study of yellow fever (based largely on the work of Carlos Finlay), it was determined the disease was transmitted by mosquitoes and not by contact with those who were sick with the disease.  Reed’s findings helped reduce the number of yellow fever cases.  They not only discovered that a certain mosquito carried the disease, but they also developed a treatment.  He made it possible to build the Panama Canal without the large loss of life that the French suffered when they attempted to construct a canal 20 years earlier.

US #856 was issued for the 25th anniversary of the start of work on the Panama Canal.  Click image to order.

Upon returning to the US, Reed spoke and wrote about yellow fever and received honorary degrees from Harvard and the University of Michigan.  He died on November 22, 1902, due to complications from a ruptured appendix. 

In the years since his death, many things have been named in his honor – an award, a tropical medicine course, and several medical centers. 

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7 Comments

  1. Thank you Mystic. I now know more about the gentleman whose name adorns the medical center near Washington, DC.

  2. Yellow fever was a killer for so many years. And even after the mosquito had been found to be the transmitter, some people in the 50s held on to the belief that it was the “miasma” coiming up from the swamps in the south. Ah, but Dr. Reed found skeeters in that miasma! Hand salute to the Major and all who worked on this discovery.

  3. Curious as to what canal the French tried to build. The statement “to construct A canal 20 years earlier” is a bit ambiguous. Was it the same location?

  4. Try the Panama Canal. My namesake was severley burned while trying to save his West Point classmates in a crash in El Paso while deploying to the Pacific the day after Pearl Harbor. He spent four years a Walter Redd in the Burn Center.We need more dedicated people like him and Mystic to tell the story.

  5. Note that Dr Stanford Chaille of Tulane University Medical School and several other physicians, including young Dr Rudolph Matas went to Cuba and were instrumental in discovering that the female Anopheles mosquito was the carrier of the disease.

  6. It is worth mentioning that “Carlos Finlay” was Doctor Carlos Finlay, a Cuban doctor. Of course, Dr. Reed didn’t live to see the effort to build the Panama Canal, but building on his work and that of Dr. Finlay and others, Dr. William Gorgas instituted a program in Panama to fight yellow fever by fighting mosquitos. Swamps and ponds were drained, sanitary conditions were improved, and mosquito netting was put into use.

  7. Than you for mentioning Dr Carlos Finlay. In previous writings of Dr Walter Reed, Dr Finlay is never mentioned. He was Cuban, of Scottish descent. My Great, Great Grandfather was also of Scottish descent, who settled in Cuba. Among the very first photographic studios in Cuba, were established by my
    family.

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