fever. Dr. Sanarelli hotly resented the Reed-Carroll findings in a communication in the Medical News of 12 August, in which he charged his "obstinate opponents" with "hiatuses of observation and inexactness in * * * experiment," leading to "gross and inexcusable error." Reed and Carroll made reply in the same journal of 9 September, refuting the charges and outlining the careful procedures of the respected laboratories of the Museum. 7[1]
By 1899, the subject of yellow fever was of all the more pressing interest because on 1 January of that year the American Forces had formally taken over from Spain the occupation of Havana, a city which had not been entirely free of the pestilence for 140 years. Yellow fever, feeding on the non-immune personnel of the occupation forces, again broke out in epidemic form, in 1900. The opportunity and the need for a fresh, thorough, and searching investigation of the source and the spread of yellow fever had come together — and the Army, fortunately, had the men who could make the most of the opportunity and could meet the need.
The Yellow Fever Board at Work
The Surgeon General again turned to Major Reed, who had so ably directed the investigations of the Typhoid Board, and to James Carroll, his second in command at the Army Medical Museum, who had participated in the investigation of the Sanarelli bacillus. These two, with Dr. Jesse W. Lazear and Dr. Aristides Agramonte, were designated as a board to investigate infectious diseases in Cuba, set up by War Department Special Orders No. 22, 24 May 1900. All four members of the Board were happy, one might say almost inspired, choices.
Walter Reed was born on 13 September 1851, in Gloucester County, Va., 8[2] where his father was a Methodist minister, and was reared in Farmville, Va., and Charlottesville, seat of the University of Virginia. After a year at the University in the study of the classics, Reed, compelled by slender family finances to curtail his education, managed to compress the 2-year course in medicine into 1 year, graduating third in his class before his 18th birthday. A year later, in 1870, he received a second M.D. degree from the Bellevue Hospital Medical College in New York. After 5 years as a hospital intern and a health department inspector in Brooklyn, he took the examinations for the Medical Department of the Army, partly because he wished to ask Miss Emilie Lawrence
