An ordinary meeting of the society was held on the 3rd November 2008. The president was in the chair. The minutes were read and approved.
The President introduced the speaker Mr James Munro FRCS who spoke to the title Walter Reed and Yellow Fever.
Yellow Fever was known as the yellow plague in the Roman and Byzantine empires. It crossed the Atlantic in the slave trade and caused epidemics in the Caribbean and southern states of America. It presents with anorexia, vomiting and jaundice after which there is a remission which is followed by multiorgan failure, black vomit and death in 50% cases.
Walter Reed was our speaker’s maternal great grandfather. He was the youngest person to qualify in medicine, at the age of 17, at Johns Hopkins, having been taught by some of the great 19th century physicians – Osler, Pasteur, and Koch. He joined the army and was in the Cuban campaign against the Spanish in which 60,000 American soldiers died from Yellow Fever. Reed studied the disease and the Army Board set up a Commission with Walter Reed at the head.
Four theories were considered. Fomites, which Osler backed; inhalation; a bacillus icteroides and a theory put forward by a Dr Carlos Finlay that it was carried by mosquitoes – and he had even put forward eradication as prevention twenty years before.
To test the mosquito theory they used volunteers who were paid $100 to join in and a further $100 if they caught the disease. Eighteen volunteers were stung, another 18 had blood from patients injected, and a further group were locked up with fomites, such as sheets that were stained with black vomit, for 2 weeks. The conclusions of the Walter Reed Commission were that 1. The female Aedes Egypti was the intermediate host, 2. Non-immune people were at risk, 3.Incubation was between three and five days, 4. That there was a 12 days between the two periods. 5. That fomites were not the cause, as no volunteers in contact with them caught the disease 6. That Yellow Fever was controlled by killing mosquitoes, and 7. That Dr Carlos Finlay’s work should be recognised. Cuba was cleared by isolating patients, fumigation, and spraying oil on stagnant water. They then set up an experiment to find a vaccine, using serum heated to 55 degrees. This prevented transmission but the unfortunate death of a nurse from Yellow Fever halted the trial and it was not until 1937 that a vaccine was developed.
The French Panama Canal Project had been stopped due to the deaths of 30,000 men and as a consequence of the Walter Reed Commission’s findings the USA took on the project. They first eradicated the mosquito from the region and there were no deaths from Yellow Fever during its building.
Sadly Dr Reed died of appendicitis in 1902. The American Army Hospital was named after him. On his grave was the inscription “He gave to man control of that dreadful scourge Yellow Fever”
There being no other business the meeting was closed at 9.45 pm.