Reed, Walter (1851–1902), physician and microbiologist, leader of the U.S. Army Yellow Fever Board that established the mosquito vector of
yellow fever.Born in Belroi, Virginia, Walter Reed received his first M.D. degree from the University of Virginia in 1869 and a second in 1870 from Bellevue Hospital Medical College in New York. From 1875 until his death he served in the Medical Corps of the U.S. Army. In 1898 he headed an army investigation of the spread of
typhoid fever in military camps during the
Spanish‐American War. Two years later, Army Surgeon General George Sternberg appointed him head of the Yellow Fever Board, charged with investigating the yellow fever problem in Havana.
Reed, together with his fellow physicians Jesse Lazear, Aristides Agramonte, and James Carroll, conducted an extensive series of experiments to determine the mode of transmission of yellow fever. Lacking an animal model for studying the disease, Reed's colleagues used their own bodies for experimentation, as well as those of American soldier volunteers and Spanish immigrants. In 1900 Reed's board successfully demonstrated that the mosquito
Aedes aegypti transmits yellow fever, a discovery that facilitated the eradication of the disease in Havana, the southern United States, and the
Panama Canal Zone. Initially lionized for the yellow fever discovery, Reed also came to be regarded as a model for ethical human experimentation, in recognition of his concern for the men who participated in the dangerous yellow fever studies and his introduction of written consent forms for medical volunteers.
See also
Disease;
Medicine: From the 1870s to 1945;
Public Health.
Bibliography
William B. Bean , Walter Reed, a Biography, 1982.
Susan E. Lederer , Subjected to Science: Human Experimentation in America before the Second World War, 1995.
Susan E. Lederer
