 | CHAPTER XXII Manuscript Draft: Walter Reed: Doctor in Uniform, by Laura Wood, [19—] |  |
22. CHAPTER XXII
Reed's announcement at the Public Health meeting of his
belief that mosquitoes spread yellow fever set no rivers afire -
too many claims had been advanced in the past few years, only to
be scrapped later. His case was far from established, he knew.
One clear demonstration, Dean's, was not enough to break down
error entrenched for half a century. It would take the series of
experiments, conducted on human subjects, for which Wood had pro-
mised funds, to establish this revolutionary theory beyond question.
245.
After consultations with Sternberg, the insect expert Dr.
Howard, Welch and other Hopkins friends, Reed hurried back to Cuba,
where he landed the end of October. He immediately set to work on
plans for to establish an isolation camp for his experiments. Camp Lazear, it was to be called, in honor of their dead colleague.
On the opposite side of the Calzada Real from Camp Colum-
bia, about a mile from Quemados, was the farm of Dr. Ignacio Rojas.
Agramonte thought one of his uncultivated fields would be a good
place for the camp. Reed, seeing, it, agreed, and they rented it.
It was secluded, well drained, and being almost bare of shrubs
and trees, was open to the sun and the wind, Expxex Experience had
shown that yellow fever could be kept out of a military reservation
less than a mile from an epidemic center, so the site's distance
from Camp Columbia was both safe and convenient.
and free from mosquitoes
Carroll was on sick leave until the middle of November, but
Agramonte came to Camp Columbia often to discuss the iso-
lation camp with Reed. Truby and the other young doctors, keenly
interested in the coming experiments, followed the plans closely
and gave Reed all the help they could, while Kean consulted with
him at every step.
There were, Reed explained to them as they sat on the veranda
after dinner, to be three phases to the experiments. They would try
to infect non-immunes by the bites of mosquitoes which had fed on
yellow fever cases in their first stage, by exposure to fomites,
and by injection of blood taken from yellow fever cases in the first
two or three days of illness. In this way he hoped to prove that
yellow jack was spread by mosquitoes, that fomites were harmless,
and that the specific agent of the disease was in the blood. Each
experiment was to be carefully controlled, to exclude exposure to
any other source of infection than the one directly in question.
246.
of Doctors Finlay, Guiteras, Albertini and Gorgas, so that the diag-
nosis of yellow fever could not be questioned.
Reed drew up the plans for the camp, and the Hospital Corps
erected seven tents, while the Quartermaster's Department started
to put up two small wooden buildings that Reed ordered. The work
was progressing well when Reed had an unexpected setback.
A violent tropical storm, striking in mid-November with heavy
wind and rain, dropped the temperature to the low sixties. Culex
fasciatus, a delicate insect in spite of its fatal power, cannot
survive wind or chill. Most of Reed's laboratory mosquitoes died,
and he was greatly alarmed that the sudden cold might put an abrupt
end to the mosquito season and leave him without insects for the
experiments.
The younger doctors reassured him: there would still be
plenty of warm weather, plenty of mosquitoes to go with it, and
plenty of yellow fever. Truby could see, however, that he was
still anxious, and wanted mosquitoes, not promises.
“Come on, boys,” he suggested after lunch one day. “Let's
lay in a supply of mosquito eggs for the major, so he can stop
worrying.”
He and several of the other doctors set off toward Quemados
on a mosquito hunt. As they passed the Quartermaster's dump it oc-
curred to them to investigate there for discarded buckets or uten-
sils holding water. To the deep embarrassment of young Dr. Amador,
the post sanitary officer, the dump was a regular mosquito mine,
in spite of the mosquito control measures he was enforcing. Most
of the utensils had the sanitary inspector's axe hole in the bottom,
247.
Eagerly scooping up wigglers and eggs to keep Reed in stock indef-
initely, they hurried with their find to his laboratory. Reed,
Neate and John H. Andrus, a Hospital Corps man who had recently
been assigned to the laboratory, joyfully set to work to rear the
wigglers and dry the eggs for future use.
The Quartermaster's dump thereafter received closer attention
from the sanitary inspectors.
Agramonte, meanwhile, was rounding up volunteers among the
Spaniards at Tiscornia, the immigration station on Havana bay. Se-
lecting only men who were of age, in good health, and without de-
pendents, the board asked them if them would “take a bite.” Many
of them, attracted by the money, the prospect of being cared for by
the “senoritas Americanas,” as they called the nurses, and the re-
flection that they were likely to get yellow fever anyway, signed
contracts with the board consenting to be bitten for the reward.
Reed, oppressed by Lazear's death, and by the heavy respon-
sibility that he and his board were assuming, was dubious, too,
about relying on the Spanish immigrants. Their cooperation, he
feared, captured by the money involved, might not survive the proof
that the “harmless little gnats” which they were paid to let bite
them would give them yellow jack.
His anxieties were unexpectedly relieved.
* * *
Breakfast at Camp Columbia was at seven, and by eight Reed
was at his desk, working on plans for the isolation camp. Camp Lazear,
it was to be called, so that their dead colleague's name should
continue to be associated with the experiments.
The knock at the door, so early in the morning, surprised him.
248.
“Come in,” he called.
John R. Kissinger and John J. Moran stepped into the room,
stepping at the same time, although no one knew it then, into
history.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” Reed greeted them. “What can I do
for you?” He was slightly acquainted with both young men. Kissinger
was a private in the Hospital Corps. Moran, who shared quarters
with him, also had been in the Hospital Corps until his term of en-
listment expired. Now he was a clerk at General Lee's headquarters.
“We heard you wanted volunteers, sir,” Moran said, “to sub-
mit to some yellow fever experiments. We talked it over, and we
thought we'd like to go in for it together.”
“It's good of you to offer,” Reed said cordially. “I don't
know if you understand just what you're getting into. This is the
situation.” He described the dangers of the experiment to them
carefully, emphasizing that he himself had no doubt that mosquitoes
spread the disease. “And of course,” he concluded, “every volunteer
gets a hundred dollars; if he comes down with yellow jack he gets
two.”
“Well, you see, Major Reed,” Kissinger explained, “wer're not
interested in being paid. The money isn't the point -it's the oppor-
tunity,” he flushed a little, “to do something for humanity and
science.” Moran nodded emphatically. “That's right, sir,” he said.
Reed, silent with astonishment, stared at them. He saw two
young men in their early twenties -two pleasant, intelligent, un-
remarkable looking boys about the age of his own son, with the best
part of their lives before them. And they were offering to risk
those lives not for military glory, not for reward -certainly not
for two hundred dollars -but for “.”“humanity and science!” He saw,
249.
was already appropriated, that they might as well take it, he
checked himself. Money could never reward this unselfish gesture.
“My dear boys,2” he said, and they could tell by his voice
that the quiet, self-possessed doctor was moved, “I am proud to
accept your brave offer.”
* * *
Greatly cheered by the volunteeringoffer of Kissinger and Moran,
Reed no longer feared a shortage of volunteers. American boys,
motivated by interest in the experiments themselves, rather than
by the prospect of reward, would not back out, no matter what the
danger.
“And when everything's running smoothly,” he remarked to
Truby, “and my personal direction isn't necessary any longer, then
I'll take the mosquito test myself.”
Truby's face clouded at the announcement. He hoped ar-
dently that Reed could be dissuaded. The major was not robust,
and he had to eat sparingly. The strain of preparation and re-
sponsibility showed now and then through his usual composure. It
would be a dangerous thing for the doctor approaching his half
century mark to tempt yellow jack.
* * *
Camp Lazear opened the morning of November 20th, without
fanfare. Agramonte was busy at the Military Hospital, and Carroll,
just back from sick leave, was needed for important bacteriological
studies, so Reed selected Ames to take charge of the camp. Dr.
Robert P. Cooke, a tall young contract doctor with straight lanky
hair and a humorous expression, had volunteered for the fomites
250.
steward, a Hospital Corps private and an ambulance driver, all im-
mune; Moran, Kissinger and six other Hospital Corps privates, all
non-immune; and several non-immune Spaniards completed the camp
personnel.
The experiments began immediately. At 10:30 on the morning
of the 20th, Kissinger rolled up his sleeve and watched with
mixed feelings while the mosquito, in the test tube pressed against
his arm, took a leisurely bite. He wondered if the fragile little
thing would really give him yellow jack. It was funny -he could
squash her with a finger tip, and maybe she could kill him just as
easily. As he rolled down his sleeve, he sighed. It was a beauti-
ful day, he realized.
The principal rule of Camp Lazear was simple and rigid: no
one could leave or enter without Reed's permission. Only the im-
munes could go out on such necessary errands as getting supplies
from Camp Columbia.
The Spaniards, whose only duty was to gather stones off the
ground for a low wall about the camp, could take all the time they
wanted to rest, and were mystified and delighted with their
life in this strange new world. The soldiers, with nothing to
do but keep their quarters neat, passed the time in reading, play-
ing cards and taking naps. Kissinger passed it in waiting for
his yellow jack. It did not develop.
Three days later he was bitten again; then, on the 26th
and 29th, mosquitoes were held to Moran's willing arm. Still no
yellow jack.
“Maybe you're a natural immune, Moran, but I'm going to
251.
jokingly. “I'm going to save you now for another test, a very
important one. You're still game?”
“For anything you want, Major,” Moran told him. Reed was
his hero; he would have done anything for him. He slaved over
the confidential letters to Sternberg that Reed entrusted to him
to type, tossing away sheet after sheet of letter-head to get a
perfect copy, and considered himself well rewarded when the doc-
tor praised his neatness.
The failure of his first four experiments did not discour-
age Reed. The weather was cool now, and he suspected, rightly,
that the germ took longer to ripen within the mosquito than it did
in hot weather. By the end of the month he still had not
produced experimental yellow fever, but life was not without in-
cident. A local newspaper on November 21st loosed a broadside
against the heartless Americans who were enticing foreign in-
nocents to submit to the injection of deadly poison. The board
had foreseen that some such trouble might arise, and it was for
that reason that they had drawn up a contract with each immi-
grant. Reed, Carroll and Agramonte, armed with the contracts,
immediately called on the Spanish consul and explained the con-
ditions on which the Spaniards had consented to take the risk.
An intelligent and courteous gentleman, the consul smilingly
advised the three doctors that, under the circumstances, he had
no objection to their experiments.
Agramonte, because his regular work kept him in Havana,
was in charge of infecting the mosquitoes at the Las Animas
ward. As he was driving out one day to the experimental camp
with his pockets bulging with test tubes full of the lethal
insects, his horse, frightened by a road building outfit, bolted
252.
pitched out at the first plunge, and the doctor, desperately
clutching his infectious mosquitoes, was dumped in a sand pile.
He arrived at the camp dusty and disheveled, but loudly rejoicing
that his misadventure had not turned a number of loaded mosquitoes
loose in the countryside.
* * *
The two little wooden buildings, situated at some distance
from the tents, were completed by November 30th. Reed had dire
and special plans for them. Building Number One, known as the
infected bedding and clothing building, was a one room shack four-
teen by twenty feet. The walls were two boards thick, the inner
one made of close-fitting tongue-and-groove lumber. Its two win-
downs, both placed in the south wall to prevent through ventila-
tion, were covered with very fine screening, and fitted with
woodedn shutters to keep out fresh air and sunlight. The building,
entered through a doubly screened vestibule, was constructed in
every particular to prevent the accidental entrance of mosquitoes.
It was closed tightly in the daytime, and its temperature was
kept at about ninety degrees by a coal oil stove, while care was taken
to keep the atmosphere humid.
In it was undertaken one of the most revolting experiments to
which scientific curiosity and loyalty to his superiors ever
goaded a hero. On November 30th, the day the building was ready,
three large boxes containing bedding used by yellow fever patients
were carried to it. These articles, foully soiled, had been packed
for two weeks in tightly closed boxes.
At six o'clock that Friday evening, Cooke and two pri-
253.
all non-immunes, entered the hot and stuffy little building
and started to unpack the loathsome articles. Reed, with inter-
est and commiseration in his face, watched from outside. The
three young men opened the boxes, pulled out and shook several
sheets and blankets, as they had been instructed to do, then made
an unscheduled bolt through the door. Goulping for air, they
stopped.
“Oh, poor fellows!” Reed exclaimed sympathetically.
It was terrible in the little house, but the three volun-
teers weren't quitting. Shaking their heads and grinning ruefully,
Cooke and the two others stubbornly re-entered it, made
up their cots with the filthy bedding, and gingerly crawled into
them.
The major might be confident that fomites were harmless,
but they still could not help feeling that their experiment was
not only much more disagreeable, but much more dangerous, than
the mosquito test; “everybody knew” -still -that fomites car-
ried yellow fever. They spent a bad night between their horrid
sheets, disturbed by evil smells and somber and uneasy thoughts.
But for science -and the major -they willingly spent twentynineteen
more nights like it.
* * *
Kissinger was a determined young man. He had already been
bitten twice without result, but he had volunteered for a case of
yellow jack, and he intended to get it.
On December 5th, at two in the afternoon, he rolled up his
sleeve for the third time and watched the mosquito bite. This was
getting monotonous, he thought.
254.
“Do you think she'll take this time, sir?” he asked. “I
certainly hope so!”
“I'll tell you in a couple of days,” Reed replied, smiling.
By evening three days later, the young volunteer had a
headache; the next day, December 9th, he was carried on his bed to
the yellow fever ward. Kissinger, at last, had his yellow jack. “In
my opinion this exhibition of moral courage has never been surpassed
in the annals of the Army of the United States,” Reed said.
Reed, his belief in the mosquito as intermediate host of
yellow fever finally confirmed, was overjoyed.
“Rejoice with me, sweetheart,” he happily wrote his wife
that night, “as, aside from the anti-oxin of diphtheria and Koch's
discovery of the tubercle bacillus, it will be regarded as the most
important piece of work, scientifically, during the 19th century.
I do not exaggerate, and I could shout for very joy that heaven has
permitted me to establish this wonderful way of propagating yellow
fever.”
There was no self-satisfaction or personal pride in his
modest and generous spirit, only thankfulness. All his efforts ever
since he began prietice had been directed toward relieving suffer-
ing, but it had never occurred to the young doctor, starting on his
career a quarter of a century before, that he would be the one to
solve the riddle of one of the cruelest plagues that afflicted humanity. Too excited and happy to sleep, he was up early the next
morning and dashed off a note announcing the news to Truby, who had
been sent across the island to Rowell Barracks at Cienfuegos as
post surgeon. Truby told the news to Lawrence Reed, who was now a
second lieutenant and shared quarters with him. Kean, almost be-
255.
carried the tidings to General Wood. The good news was on the
wing.
When the volunteers for the fomites experiment heard it,
the gravity of their bearing disappeared in a rush of uproarious
high spirits. They felt as if a death sentence had been lifted.
Reed was feeling wonderful. The Havana Yellow Fever Board de-
clared that Kissinger had unmistakable yellow fever -one of its
members had earlier declared the mosquito theory “wild and im-
probable” and reluctantly ate his words -and, to make every-
thing perfect, Kissinger was getting well.
Reed was deeply grateful for his recovery. As a good of-
ficer he hated to expose one of his men to a danger he did not
share; as a good doctor he hated to gamble with a human
life; and as a scientist he feared that the experiments could not
continue if one of the cases died. Volunteers would probably be
frightened away, and public opinion would force him to stop the work.
He desperately hoped that his luck -and his volunteers' luck -
would hold.
Within the next week three Spaniards, exposed to mosquito
bites just as Kissinger had been, came down with yellow fever.
All recovered. One of them, an engaging young man named Antonio
Benigno, whom Reed always called Boniato, Spanish for sweet potatoe,
because of his liking for that vegetable, was overjoyed when he
received his reward, which represented huge wealth to him, in ten
and twenty dollar gold pieces. Several of the Spaniards, however,
were convinced by their countrymen's illness that the “little
flies” were really dangerous. They forgot, as Reed put it, “their
256.
connection with Camp Lazear. Personally,” he added, “while lament-
ing to some extent their departure, I could not but feel that in
placing themselves beyond our control they were exercising the
soundest judgment.” No shadow of doubt as to the guilt of mosqui-
toes could linger now.
Nor could anyone but a thorough skeptic doubt the harmless-
ness of fomites. On December 19th, after twenty nights passed in
the most contaminated surroundings, Cooke and Folk and Jernegan
emerged from the infected bedding building in their usual good
health. They had even put on a few pounds. Two more non-immunes,
James Hanberry and Edward Weatherwalks, took their place as sub-
jects of the revolting but harmless demonstration, and were themselves
later relieved by James Hildebrand and Thomas M. England.
This line of experimentation, having failed to produce a single
case of yellow fever, was finally abandoned after two months.
The seven brave and patient men who underwent this horrible
ordeal were at no time in danger of contracting yellow fever, but
that comforting fact was something of which they could not be sure
until it was all over. It took just as much courage to disprove
the virulence of fomites, in which the best authorities were con-
vinced,believed, as it did to prove that of mosquitoes. The practical value
of the experiment was immense, since it clearly showed the uselessness
of destroying valuable property in an effort to check the spread of
yellow fever.
The Havana medical men, abruptly won over by Reed's con-
clusive results, hurried to do belated honor to their own neglected
prophet, Dr. Finlay. They gave him a banquet on the night of Decem-
257.
Reed's board, Wood, Kean, Gorgas and other military doctors. Dr.
Juan Guiteras tactfully distributed the honors to everyone's satis-
faction. Dr. Finlay, he said, was like Sir Patrick Manson, who had
advanced the theory that mosquitoes carried malaria; and Reed was
like Sir Ronald Ross, who proved Manson's theory and gave it prac-
tical value.
Finlay, benign and happy, smiled around at the doctors gath-
ered in his honor, doctors who had laughed at him until a few days
ago. After twenty years, thanks to the clear, brilliant demonstra-
tion of the middle-aged American medical officer, his cherished
theory was accepted. They had been long years, and discouraging
sometimes, but this -the cheers and applause roared musically in
his ears -this wiped out every painful recollection.
Reed, happy as Finlay, was looking ahead -far ahead to a
day when his demonstration would bear fruit, when mosquito control
measures would wipe the plague from the earth.
* * *
Reed was ready for the next step in his demonstration.
“Now we want to show that the difference between an infected
and an uninfected house is due only to the presence of loaded mos-
quitoes. This is the experiment I've been saving you for, Moran,”
he told his only civilian volunteer.
“Good,” Moran said. He was determined, too, like Kiss-
inger. He had bargained for yellow jack, and he meant to get it.
Across a slight depression and eighty yards distant from
the infected bedding building, was the second of the small houses
that Reed had had built. Building Number Two, or the infected mos-
quito building, was like Building Number One, except that its win-
258.
titioned inside by a very fine wire screen through which mosquitoes
could not pass. Built against one side of it, also, was a room in
which the board now kept its mosquitoes, to avoid the risks involved
in carrying them back and forth to Havana. Agramonte's runaway
had been too close a call.
Into one of the two rooms formed by the screen partition Reed
liberated, on December 21st, fifteen insects which had previously,
at various times, fed on yellow fever cases. Moran, fresh from a
bath and in a clean nightshirt -he felt a little like a sacrificial
lamb -promptly at noon went into the mosquito infested room and lay
down on a clean cot. The board members, with two non-immune volun-
teers who were to remain on the mosquito less side of the partition,
watched through the screen.
In a few moments the insects were buzzing close about Moran.
Repressing an almost overwhelming impulse to swat them, he winced as
they bit him about the face and hands. He lay still for half an
hous, while they deliberately settled on him and fed.
“Good boy,” Reed commended him. “That should just about
do for now. We'll do it again this afternoon and tomorrow. And I
think you'll have that yellow jack you've been asking for.”
When Moran's three ordeals were over the two non-immunes who had watched the ceremonies with the
doctors remained on the other side of the room, separated from the
mosquitoes only by the wire screen, but otherwise exposed to exactly
the same influences as Moran had been. Moran went back to his tent,
took his temperature and pulse every three hours, and waited as pa-
tiently as he could for his yellow jack. He felt pretty sure of it
this time.
Chrsitmas was warm and cloudy. Reed, unable to get to Camp
259.
Moran was feeling. It was about time for him to come down with the
fever, he reflected, as he approached the young man's tent. He had
already made a stop at the mosquito building, and found the non-
immune controls in excellent health and Christmas spirits.
“Merry Christmas, Moran!” Reed said as he entered the vol-
unteer's tent. Moran, lying on his cot, struggled to his feet.
“ And to you, sir,” he answered.
"Anything new?
Moran, blinking with headache, pointed to his temperature
and pulse chart. Reed glanced quickly at it -fever a hundred and
one, pulse fast, he saw -and looked closely at Moran, noting his
flushed face and bloodshot eyes.
Concern and jubilation struggled in his face. He had done
it again, he had proved his point! Moran was sick, the controls
were well -this demonstrated that the mosquito was the essential,
the single, factor in making a house infected!
“Get back into bed,” he ordered. “Moran,” he rubbed his
hands gleefully, “this is one of the happiest days of my life!”
Moran, ill as he felt, could not help grinning sympathetic-
ally. The major acted as pleased as a young interne -it was almost
worth a bout of the fever to see him so elated.
Later that afternoon Stark and his wife, and Kean and Mrs.
Kean, who had come with him to Cuba when he returned from sick leave,
had a Christmas party for a few of the officers. A guava bush,
brightly trimmed, acted as Christmas tree, and all the children un-
der six on the post were invited to receive presents. Reed was the
gayest person there.
260.
When the children's gifts had been distributed, the two
hostesses produced comic ones, accompanied by doggerel verse, for
several of the men. A major of convivial habits was given a toy
water-wagon, and Stark, a skeleton of a man, got a cake of “obesity
soap,” capable, so its makers alleged, of washing away the unwanted
pounds.
And the great new discovery in yellow fever was suitably
recognized. Dr. Amador, the sanitary officer, was presented with a
can of kerosene, fatal to mosquito wigglers, with the jingle:
Of barrels deep and wide.
Doctors have become so mean
Mosquitoes have to hide.
But the doctor's eagle eye
Falls on the poor mosquito
And she will have to die.”
For Reed there was a fragile package that seemed to be all
ends.
“What a work of art!” he laughingly exclaimed, as he got the
wrapper off, and held it up for everyone to see. It was a handsome
mosquito, fashioned of a champagne cork and toothpicks, with a for-
midable stinger, and legs and body realistically striped to resemble
Culex fasciatus. He read his rhymes out loud:
Roams the Mosquito wild.
No one can catch ofr tame him
For he is Nature's child.
261.
And none his pleasure mar
Till Major Reed does capture him
And put him in a jar.
He has our sympathy,
For since the Major spotted him
He longs to be a flea!"
It was a happy Christmas, Reed thought as he went to bed,
one of the happiest of hims life. The guilt was firmly pinned on
Culex fasciatus, and they knew how to deal with mosquitoes. “With
Howard and kerosene,” as he wrote the insect expert, Dr. Howard,
they could practically eliminate the yellow fever mosquito. Culex
and anopheles, what a gay old pair of troublemakers they had
been! But now their days were numbered.
* * *
Moran slowly emerged from his feverish stupor to realize
that the quiet, insistent voice of which he had been faintly aware
for some time was Major Reed's, and that it was speaking to him.
He squinted, focusing his aching eyes, and tried to catch the sense
of the words.
“Are you in pain, Moran?” the doctor repeated the question.
Moran weighed the form of his answer, whether to nod his
bursting head, or speak through the dreadful taste in his mouth.
“Yes,” he whispered.
“Can you localize the pain?” Reed persisted, “back, legs, head?”
The sick man noticed that there were other men in the room
besides Reed, and his attention wandered briefly to the white side
262.
from the foot of the cot. It was his first glimpse of Finlay.
“No,” he answered, a little more clearly, “it's just everywhere.”
“You can groan, Moran, or even yell if you want to. It's all
right to make a fuss. It may relieve you some,” Reed advised him
sympathetically. He bent down to catch the mumbled words, “...knew
what I was getting into.... not a cry-baby....” and straightened
smiling.
Moran, slipping away into stupor again, was still conscious
of the murmur of the doctors' voices, and caught the one
clear phrase, “a very pretty case.” Pretty! He shut his teeth
tight against a groan, and turned his head away.
It might be a pretty case, but that didn't mean Reed liked it.
He was terribly anxious. Moran knew the major came to see him early
and late, but he never knew how often. It was everal days before
Reed was sure his volunteer would recover from the experiment through
which he had put him. “Thank God!” he thought, “It will be a Happy
New Year after all.”
* * *
It was New Year's Eve. Reed was seated at his field desk-
the same desk at which, three brief months before, he had found the
vital clue in Lazear's pocket notebook. He was writing a letter to
his wife. His face was tired, and the lines in it were deep and
grave from the long strain, but it had the serenity of a man who
has accomplished an unselfish purpose.
“The prayer that has been mine for twenty years,” he was
writing, “that I might be permitted in some way or at some time to
do something to alleviate human suffering has been granted! A
thousand Happy New Years!”
263.
He stopped, his pen poised over the paper, at the first
ringing note. The twenty-four bugles, blown in concert, were
sounding taps for the old year. There was a moment's quiet, then
they sounded reveille -reveille for a new year, and a new century,
to which yellow fever would be not a scourge, but a fading memory.
264.
| CHAPTER XXII Manuscript Draft: Walter Reed: Doctor in Uniform, by Laura Wood, [19—] | |