The Cavalier daily :: Friday, May 24, 1968 :: University of Virginia Library

Tucked away in a far, quiet
corner of Alderman Library, the
noted medical editor and scholar
of medical history shares an office
with the spirit of Walter Reed.

"It's surprising how alive he has
become to me in the time I have
been here," says Dr. Bean.

As visiting professor of medicine
and history of medicine at the
University, Dr. Bean is spending
six months surrounded by the vast
Walter Reed-Yellow Fever
Archive, assembled by the late
Nobel laureate, Dr. Philip S.
Hench. It was presented to the
University in 1966 by his widow.

The ink has faded to brown on
letters written by Reed to his sweetheart
and later wife, Emilie B.
Lawrence.

"Sometimes I feel like an interloper,"
said Dr. Bean as he replaced
the letters in their proper
file folder. "It's as though I'm
looking over his shoulder."

On Sabbatical

Dr. Bean is on sabbatical leave
from the State University of Iowa
where he is professor and head of
the department of internal
medicine. His study of Walter
Reed memorabilia at the University
is the first step in a plan to
write a history on the work and
life of Dr. Reed, conqueror of
the dread yellow fever in Cuba
in 1899-1900.

Dr. Bean didn't know much
about Walter Reed until asked to
talk at the University on September
13, 1951, to mark the 100th
anniversary of Reed's birth at
Gloucester County, Va.

That talk started his research
and since then he's come to know
Reed, the man, fairly well.

Awful Verse

"Some of his later letters to
Emilie contain pre-Victorian verse
-really awful verse," Dr. Bean
said.

However, Reed-the bacteriologist,
physician and writer of medical
papers-emerges as an admired
giant in medicine.

"Reed didn't write a single medical
paper until he was 41," Dr.
Bean said. "Within 10 years he
wrote more than 30 such papers,
at least 10 of which are regarded
as medical classics."

From study done at Iowa, Dr.
Bean feels Reed's typhoid fever
contributions were overshadowed
by his discovery of the mosquito-carrying
yellow fever.

"He never got any credit for
work with typhoid fever," Dr.
Bean said, adding:

"Without any doubt, Walter
Reed was the most distinguished
alumnus of this school."

Medical Grad

The Medical School was perhaps
100 feet from where Alderman
Library now stands when Reed
was a medical graduate from the
University of Virginia in 1869.

Although born in the Philippines
in 1909 while his father was doing
physical anthropology there, Dr.
Bean lived in Charlottesville from
age six to 25. While his father,
the late Dr. Robert B. Bean,
was professor of anatomy at the
University for 28 years, Dr. Bean
attended Lane High School, Episcopal
High School, and received
his B. A. degree in 1932
and medical degree in 1935 from
the University of Virginia.

He recalls as a boy prowling
through Thomas Jefferson's
Monticello when it was privately
owned and it was at Farmington
he met his wife, the former Abigail
Shepard.

Moved To "Morea"

Since Dr. and Mrs. Bean moved
into "Morea," the University's
resident house for visiting professors,
he has continually met people
who remember his family from
earlier Charlottesville days. He also
keeps finding people connected
with Walter Reed.

One woman in here 90's remembers
Reed when she was a
girl and he was in school here,
Dr. Bean discovered.

He has already met Robert H.
Kean whose father, Major Jefferson
R. Kean, was Reed's first
case of yellow fever in Cuba and a
personal friend of Reed's.

Rides Bike

When he's not in his office delving
into other writers' work on
Reed, Dr. Bean is either attending
rounds at University Hospital
or riding his bicycle between
"Morea" and the University.

"Other biographies on Reed
seem to have sampled very poorly
some of the sources available,"
he said.

In the interest of the book he
plans to be the most thorough
Reed biography, Dr. Bean is examining
every facet of Reed's life
so that he can turn the "ghost"
in his office into a flesh-and-blood
man on paper.