Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 2137

WALTER REED (1851-1902) Report on the origin and spread of typhoid fever in U.S. military camps during the Spanish war of 1898. Government Printing Office 1904 Vol. I: xviii, 721 pp. 29.3 cm.; Vol. II: 96 maps and charts. 34.4 x 42.2 cm.

Reed, a native of Virginia, received his medical degree at the University of Virginia. He was commissioned in the Army Medical Corps in 1875 and remained in the Army for the remainder of his career. Reed is perhaps best known for producing conclusive evidence that the mosquito, Aedes aegypti, is the vector in yellow fever, the dread disease which took so many lives in military campaigns and among the civilian population. Several years before his now-famous yellow fever studies, he headed an Army commission to study the origin and spread of typhoid fever in army camps. An abstract of the report was issued in 1900, and the present exhaustive report was published by Reed's collaborators, Victor C. Vaughan and Edward O. Shakespeare. Their work, here reported in great detail, demonstrated that flies were the major carriers of the disease, aided by dust, unclean hospital attendants, infected patients, and infected bedding and waste matter. The report was well received and had an immediate effect in the effort to develop better methods to control typhoid fever throughout the world.

Gift of John Martin, M.D.