Walter Reed
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Robot - Moving category Deaths of peritonitis to Deaths from peritonitis per [[WP:CFD|CFD]] at [[Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2008 June 21]].
{{about|the U.S. army surgeon|other people and things with the name Walter Reed|Walter Reed (disambiguation)}}
{{Infobox Person
|name = Walter Reed
|image = WalterReed.jpeg
|image_size = 200px
|caption = Walter Reed
|birth_date = {{birth date|1851|9|13|mf=y}}
|birth_place = {{flagicon|USA}} [[Virginia|Belroi]], [[Virginia]], [[United States|U.S.]]
|death_date = {{death date and age|1902|11|23|1851|9|13|mf=y}}
|death_place = {{flagicon|USA}} [[Washington, DC]]
|occupation = Physician in U.S. army
|spouse = Emilie Lawrence (m. Apr. 1876)
|parents = Lemuel Sutton Reed and Pharaba White
|children = one son and daughter, one adopted Indian daughter
}}
[[Major]] '''Walter Reed''', [[M.D.]], ([[September 13]] [[1851]] - [[November 23]] [[1902]]) was a [[U.S. Army]] physician who in 1900 led the team which confirmed the theory (first set forth in [[1881]] by [[Cuba]]n doctor/scientist [[Carlos Finlay]]) that [[yellow fever]] is transmitted by [[mosquito]]es, rather than by direct contact. This insight opened entire new fields of [[epidemiology]] and [[biomedicine]] and most immediately allowed the resumption and completion of work on the [[Panama Canal]] (1904-14) by the United States.
==Biography==
Walter Reed was born and raised in Belroi, an [[unincorporated community]] in [[Gloucester County, Virginia|Gloucester County]] in eastern [[Virginia]]'s [[Middle Peninsula]] region, to Lemuel Sutton Reed (a [[Methodist]] minister) and Pharaba White.
[[Image:Walterreedbirthplace.jpg|left|thumb|Walter Reed Birthplace]]After two year-long sessions at the [[University of Virginia]], Reed completed the M.D. degree in 1869, at the age of 17. He then enrolled at the [[New York University]]'s [[Bellevue Hospital Center| Bellevue Hospital Medical College]] in Manhattan, New York, where he obtained a second M.D. in 1870. After interning at several New York City hospitals, he served the New York Board of Health until 1875. He married Emilie (born Emily) Lawrence on April 26, 1876 and took her west with him. Later, Emilie would give birth to a son and a daughter and the couple would adopt an Indian girl while posted in frontier camps.<ref>Crosby, Molly Caldwell (2006). ''The American Plague'', p. 134. New York: Berkley Books. ISBN 0-425-21202-5</ref>
With his youth apparently limiting his influence, Reed joined the U.S. Army Medical Corps, both for its professional opportunities and the modest financial security it could provide. He spent much of his Army career until 1893 at difficult postings in the American West, at one point, looking after several hundred Apache Indians, including [[Geronimo]]. During one of his last tours, he completed advanced coursework in pathology and bacteriology in the [[Johns Hopkins Hospital|Johns Hopkins University Hospital Pathology Laboratory]].
Reed joined the faculty of the newly-opened Army Medical School in Washington, D.C. in 1893, where he held the professorship of Bacteriology and Clinical Microscopy. In addition to his teaching responsibilities, he actively pursued medical research projects and served as the curator of the Army Medical Museum, which later became the [[National Museum of Health and Medicine]] (NMHM).
Reed first traveled to [[Cuba]] in 1899 to study disease in U.S. Army encampments there. [[Yellow fever]] became a problem for the Army during the [[Spanish American War]], felling thousands of soldiers in Cuba.
In May [[1900]], Reed, a major, returned to Cuba when he was appointed head of the Army board charged by [[Surgeon General of the United States Army|Surgeon General]] [[George Miller Sternberg]] to examine tropical diseases including yellow fever. Sternberg was one of the founders of [[bacteriology]] during this time of great advances in medicine due to widespread acceptance of [[Louis Pasteur]]'s [[germ theory of disease]] as well as the methods of studying bacteria developed by [[Robert Koch]].
During Reed's tenure with the US Army Yellow Fever Commission in Cuba, the board confirmed both the transmission by mosquitoes and disproved the common belief that yellow fever could be transmitted by clothing and bedding soiled by the body fluids and excrement of yellow fever sufferers - articles known as [[fomite]]s.
The board conducted many of its dramatic series of experiments at Camp Lazear, named in November 1900 for Reed's assistant and friend [[Jesse William Lazear]] who had died two months earlier of yellow fever while a member of the Commission.
The risky but fruitful research work was done with human volunteers, including some of the medical personnel such as Lazear and [[Clara Maass]] who allowed themselves to be deliberately infected. The research work with the disease under Reed's leadership was largely responsible for stemming the mortality rates from yellow fever during the building of the [[Panama Canal]], something that had confounded the French attempts to build in that region only 30 years earlier.
Following Reed's return from Cuba in 1901, he continued to speak and publish on yellow fever. He received honorary degrees from Harvard and the University of Michigan in recognition of his [[wikt:seminal|seminal]] work.
In November 1902, Reed's [[Vermiform appendix|appendix]] ruptured; he died on November 23, 1902, of the resulting [[peritonitis]], at age 51. He was [[Burial|buried]] in [[Arlington National Cemetery]].
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==Legacy==
Reed's breakthrough in yellow fever research is widely considered a milestone in biomedicine, opening new vistas of research and humanitarianism.
*[[Walter Reed General Hospital]] (WRGH), [[Washington, D.C.]] was opened on [[May 1]] [[1909]], seven years after his death.
*[[Walter Reed Army Medical Center]] (WRAMC) opened in 1977 as the successor to WRGH; it is the world-wide tertiary care medical center for the U.S. Army and is utilized by congressmen and presidents.
*[[Walter Reed Army Institute of Research]] (WRAIR), near Washington, DC, is the largest biomedical research facility administered by the [[United States Department of Defense|DoD]].
*[[Walter Reed National Military Medical Center]], a new hospital complex to be constructed on the grounds of the [[National Naval Medical Center]], [[Bethesda, Maryland]] by 2011.
*[[Riverside Walter Reed Hospital]] in [[Gloucester, Virginia]] (near Reed's birthplace) opened on September 13, 1977.
*[[Walter Reed Medal]] (1912 to present) was awarded posthumously to Reed for his yellow fever work.
*[[Walter Reed Middle School]], [[North Hollywood, California]] is named in Reed's honor.
*Reed was portrayed dramatically by actor [[Lewis Stone]] in a 1938 Hollywood movie, ''[[Yellow Jack (play and film)|Yellow Jack]]'' (from a 1934 play). The same storyline was again presented in television episodes (both titled “Yellow Jack”) of ''[[Celanese Theatre]]'' (1952) and of ''[[Producers' Showcase]]'' (1955), in the latter of which Reed was portrayed by actor [[Broderick Crawford]].
*A song, "Walter Reed", was released by [[Michael Penn]] and tells of a soldier's desire to be taken to Walter Reed Medical Center.
*[[PBS]]'s ''[[American Experience]]'' series broadcast a 2006 episode, [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/fever/ ''The Great Fever''], on the Reed yellow fever campaign.
*[http://yellowfever.lib.virginia.edu/reed/ Philip S. Hench Walter Reed Yellow Fever Collection] at the University of Virginia Health Sciences Library
*[http://www.iafflocalf151.com Walter Reed Army Medical Center Firefighters Washington D.C. IAFF F151]
==References==
===Citations===
{{reflist}}
===Other sources===
*[[William Bennett Bean|Bean, William B.]], ''Walter Reed: A Biography'', Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1982.
*Bean, William B., “Walter Reed and Yellow Fever,” ''[[JAMA]]'' 250.5 (5 August 1983): 659-62.
==External links==
*[http://www.wramc.amedd.army.mil/welcome/history/ WRAMC Website Reed History]
*[http://wrair-www.army.mil/AboutWRAIR/WRAIROverview/MajorWR.asp WRAIR Website Reed History]
*[http://yellowfever.lib.virginia.edu/reed/reed.html University of Virginia, Philip S. Hench - Walter Reed Yellow Fever Collection: Walter Reed Biography]
*[http://walterreed.blogspot.com Online Journal of a Wounded Veteran at Walter Reed]
*{{findagrave|857}}
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[[Category:1851 births]]
[[Category:1902 deaths]]
[[Category:Burials at Arlington National Cemetery]]
[[Category:Congressional Gold Medal recipients]]
[[Category:American entomologists]]
[[Category:American Methodists]]
[[Category:People from Virginia]]
[[Category:Military physicians]]
[[Category:University of Virginia alumni]]
[[Category:Deaths from peritonitis]]
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