University of Virginia Library

Delegates Honor Dr. Reed;
Oxford Professor To Speak

Experts in infectious disease will come
to the University today and tomorrow to
help mark the 100th year since the
graduation of one of the University's
most famous medical alumni.

The annual John S. Anderson lecture today
and a symposium tomorrow will commemorate
the graduation of Dr. Walter Reed from the
University's School of Medicine in 1869. Dr.
Reed's major contribution to medicine was his
discovery in 1900 that yellow fever was carried
by a mosquito.

Dr. Paul B. Becson, Nuffield Professor of
Clinical Medicine at Oxford University, will
deliver the Anderson lecture at 8:30 p.m. today
in the medical school auditorium. His topic will
be "Some Basic Questions Suggested by
Observation of Human Infections." Known for
his work on the mechanism of fever, Dr. Becson
is co-editor of the "Cecil-Lobe Textbook of
Medicine." Former president of the Association
of American Physicians, he is the first American
to be named professor of medicine at Oxford
since Sir William Osler in 1905. Dr. Becson was
chairman of the department of internal
medicine at Yale University before going to
Oxford.

Opening the symposium Wednesday at 9
a.m. in the medical school auditorium will be a
lecture on Reed by Dr. William B. Bean,
chairman of the department of intern
medicine at the University of Iowa. Recipient
of the American Medical Writers' Association
award for distinguished service to biomedical
communication.

His talk will be followed by discussions of
"Man and His Microflora." Dr. Walsh McDermott,
professor and chairman of public health
at Cornell University and co-editor with Dr.
Becson of the medicine text, will focus on the
past. Dr. Rene Dubos, professor at Rockefeller
University and Pulitzer Prize winner, will
discuss the future.

Both sessions will end with panel discussions
led by Dr. Robert M. Glaser, dean of the
Stanford University School of Medicine; Dr.
Martin M. Cummings, director of the National
Library of Medicine; Dr. David E. Rogers, dean
of the Johns Hopkins University School of
Medicine, and Dr. W. Barry Wood Jr., chairman
of the department of microbiology at Johns
Hopkins.

"Walter Reed is probably the most famous
graduate the University medical school has
had," says Dr. Thomas H. Hunter, chancellor
for medical affairs. "His contributions in the
field of yellow fever and other infectious
diseases are some of the greatest contributions
that have been made to medicine.

"It is appropriate that in this year, the
100th anniversary of Reed's graduation and the
University's sesquicentennial, we should honor
him by bringing together some of the most
outstanding people in the field to take a
historical look at infectious disease."