University of Virginia - Corks and Curls Yearbook (Charlottesville, VA)

Page 11 text:

-.u-w.-ou.. .. , ' thy, In the meantime, too, he served, at several different periods, as Member of the Army Medical Board in this city, was a member of the Cholera Board in July, 1898; was on detached duty making inspections of camps and held hospitals in August, 1898; was member of the Typhoid Fever Board in August, September, and October, 1898; in October, 1898, he was on inspection duty at Natural Bridge, Va., and again in April and May, 1899, at Puerto Principe, Cuba. In March and April, 1900, he was ordered to investigate and report upon the use of electrozone and germicides at Tampa and Havana, and in June and july, 1900, was a member of a Board of Medical Officers at Camp Columbia, Cuba, for the purpose of scientific investigation with reference to infectious diseases prevalent in Cuba, and, from September 27 to October I 3, 1900, on similar duty with regard to yellow fever. These various assignments were of great importance from the stand- point of preventive medicine and did much to solidify the foundation on which he was destined to erect the structure 8 more lasting than brass 8 which t0-day towers above the many works of a life full of labors for the benefit of his fellow- man. is 3k :k :k :1: Major Reed as a Medical Officer, by MAJOR J. R. KEAN, Swgeon, U. 5. Army. In speaking of Dr. Reed as a medical ofhcer we should consider especially that part 01 his career with which the members of this Society are least familiar, namely, from his entrance into the Army in 1875 to his assignment to duty in Washington in 1893. With the latter date began his career as a scientific man, although much of his time during this last decade was given to examining boards and other work of a military rather than scientific character, and the race horse spent much time at the plough. These eighteen years of garrison duty were, we may be sure, not wasted, yet the official records tell but little of them. The records show fifteen changes of station twith four years in Arizona, five in the Department of the Platte, two in the Department of Dakota, three in the South, and three in the Easty There are a few brief commendations for professional zeal and devotion to his patients, and that is all. The work of young Army surgeons claims always little space in the gazettes or in the reports of military commanders and in the i70is and ,80is the life was certainly not stinflulatingr to intellectual effort. The surgeon shared with his comrades of the line the tedium of long marches and the monotonous sameness of Arizona summers and Dakota winters. And those with whom bomw camamdeyie outweighed studious industry shared also the afternoons of b0tt1e-p001 and beer, and the nightly seductions 0f draw 7

Page 10 text:

avfew months after his graduation at the University of Virginia he went to New York and matriculated at the Bellevue Medical College, and in one session ac- quired. the degree of M. D. Following his graduation at Bellevue he was attached to var1ous hospitals in New York and Brooklyn, conspicuously the Bfooklyn City Hospital and the Charity Hospital on Blackwell's Island ; at the latter he devoted himself especially to the study of the diseases of women and children. He was i also for a while, one of the physicians to the poor of New York City. During :7 his Brooklyn life he had attracted the attention of Dr. Joseph Hutchinson, one of the most prominent medical men of that city, who urged and secured his appoint- ment as one of the five Inspectors of the Board of Health-a position much sought after in those days. This post he was filling most creditably when his twenty-first birthday dawned. Even at this early date, Dr. Reed had acquired a very enviable standing among the medical men of New York and Brooklyn, among whom he was especially well known for his skill as a surgeon. W ithin a few years, as we have seen, he had been holding various professional positions of responsibility, but he could not help feeling that there was a point beyond which he could not go on the road toward that success which he coveted, without the inHuence of wealthy friends and of infiuential social connections on the spot. Thus it was that in 1874 he began to think seriously of entering the Medical Corps of the Army or of the Navy, and, by the spring of 1875, he had chosen the Army as the field for his future labors. :k 2!: 5k i: :34 Turning to the military history of Major Walter Reed, as borne upon the records at the office of the Surgeon General of the Army, we find that he was appointed Assistant Surgeon with the rank of First Lieutenant June 26, I875; promoted to be Assistant Surgeon with the rank of Captain June 26, 1880; 1;: Surgeon with rank of Major December 4, 1893; and at the time of his death was :11, , first on the list of Majors in the Medical Department. . i He was on duty in the Department of the East from July 23, 1875, to May 21, 1876; in the Department of Arizona from June, 1876, to May, 1880; again in the Department of the East from September, 1880, to November, 1882. From Novem- ber, 1882, to July, 1887, he was attached to the Department of the Platte, and from August, 1887, to October, 1890, he was on duty at Mt. Vernon Barracks, Alabama. His next assignment was to duty in Baltimore, Md., from October, 1890, to October, 1891, when he was transferred to the Department of Dakota, where he remained until August, 1893, when he was ordered to duty in the office a of the Surgeon General of the Army. Under this assignment he was Curator of the Army Medical Museum and Member of the Faculty of the Army Medical School for over nine years and up to the date of his death, which occurred in this city November 23, 1902.

Page 12 text:

poker. But for medical officers this life was redeemed by the study of our profes- sion, Which was then beginning to broaden out from ancient channels into the full Hood of recent progress, and it was saved from triviality by those stern responsi- bilities of life and death which practise brings to all physicians. To lesser minds the limitations of such a life might have been narrowing, but for the eager industry and professional devotion of a Reed they made the roots strike deep; and when we are surprised at the rapid growth and splendid fruit of his career as a scien- tist we must remember that in the post surgeo'nis unmarked life the seed was ger-- minated and the roots were lirmly set. But for the opportunities given him by his position in the army, however distinguished he may have become in other ways, it is safe to say that the work with which his fame will always be inseparably con- nected would never have been accomplished by him, During this long appren- ticeship he acquired, too, that perfect familiarity with the conditions and limita- tions of army life which, combined with his scientific knowledge and sound j udg'ment, made him the best sanitary inspector in the Army, and the court of last resort on all sanitary questions. I first learned to know Dr. Reed by reputation when in the spring of ,88 I- followed him in station at Fort Robinson, a two-battalion post in the north- west corner of N ebraska. I learned much of his devotion to his patients, and their devotion to him was equally in evidence. The country about is thinly settled with families locally known as ii Grangersfi who were attempting to support themselves by farming in a grazing country where the rainfall was not sufficient for good crops except only about one year in three.- The crop of babies, how- ever, never failed, and the Klebs-LoefHer bacillus and. the pneumococcus Hourished perennially in their wretched cabins. To Reed is tender and generous spirit the call of these poor people never came in vain, and the trail was never so long or the night so dark as to deter him. In the Winter these rides were really dangerous and a source of much uneasiness to his family and friends for fear of his being overtaken by one of those blizzards in which the stanchest horse turns tail to the wind and the most experienced frontiersman can not see his way, and the danger to the lost traveler is greater than that of a battle. Again we hnd him at Mount V ernon Barracks in Alabama, according to the oflicial statement of his commanding officer, devoting himself with the same ear- nestness and patience to the sick of Geronimois band of Apaches, then held there as prisoners, and to the sick negroes of the surrounding country, as to his own patients in the garrison. Of the first years of his service which he spent in Arizona I gained some knowledge when in the summer of 1896 he came to Key West, my station at that time, to study the blood of variola-there being an epidemic of smallpox there at that time. All day he would sit over his microscope, but the evenings we spent 8 -a-..n.. .. 2-1;