CDCGeoSWG Series #3: Walter Reed
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Placed in time for CDC’s GIS week, this is the third in a series of caches that are in honor of notable public health people, events, or themes. Cache container is small, with only a log. BYOP. Stealth will be needed, since the starting point for this cache is out in the open, along a busy road, and in full view of customers of a nearby establishment.
Walter Reed was a U.S. Army physician who in 1900 led the team that postulated and confirmed the theory that yellow fever is transmitted by mosquitoes, rather than by direct contact. This insight not only contributed to the development of epidemiology and biomedicine, but also was one of the most significant factors that permitted the resumption and completion of work on the Panama Canal by the United States.
Construction of the Panama Canal, one of the largest engineering projects ever undertaken, was first attempted by the French under Ferdinand de Lesseps, the developer of the Suez Canal, between 1880 and 1893. After more than 20,000 workers died in the attempt, mostly from malaria and yellow fever, this effort was abandoned. At the time, the role of the mosquito as a disease vector was not recognized.
After obtaining his medical degrees (yes, he actually had two MD degrees), and several years of internships in the New York metro area, Walter Reed joined the Army in 1875 and was promptly assigned to several postings in the American West. After advanced study in pathology and bacteriology at Johns Hopkins in 1891, he joined the faculty of the Army Medical School in Washington, D.C., where he held the professorship of Bacteriology and Clinical Microscopy.
In addition to his teaching responsibilities, Dr. Reed actively pursued a number of medical research projects on cholera, typhoid, malaria, and yellow fever. Yellow fever in particular had become a significant problem for the Army during the Spanish-American War, affecting thousands of soldiers in Cuba. In 1900, he was appointed head of the Army board charged by Surgeon General George Miller Sternberg to examine tropical diseases including yellow fever. During his tenure with the U.S. Army Yellow Fever Commission in Cuba, the board both confirmed 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.
Although history books give Dr. Reed much of the credit for controlling yellow fever, Reed himself credited Dr. Carlos Finlay with the discovery of the yellow fever vector. Dr. Reed often cited Dr. Finlay's papers in his own articles and gave him credit for the discovery, even in his personal correspondence. Following Dr. 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 seminal work. In November 1902, his appendix ruptured and he died of the resulting peritonitis. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
In 1904, after the US signed a treaty with Columbia, facilitated the independence of Panama from Columbia, and bought out the equipment used by the French in their previous attempt at building a canal, the Army Corps of Engineers began work on the “big ditch” that would eventually become the Panama Canal. Thanks to Dr Reed’s contributions, the subsequent sanitation and mosquito abatement programs advocated by Dr William Gorgas, chief sanitary officer for the canal project, were a success, and the canal formally opened in 1914.
The naming of this cache after a pioneer in vectorborne disease control is appropriate for two reasons. Firstly, it is located a stone’s throw away from the Chamblee campus of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which started its existence as a federal agency named the Office of National Defense Malaria Control Activities. As its name suggests, ONDMCA focused on fighting malaria by killing mosquitoes. Secondly, placement of the cache is in an area occasionally requiring mosquito control.
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