The Career of Leonard Wood

by Joseph Hamblen Sears

Nevertheless different methods had to be used in Havana. It is impossible here to go into the mass of detail in the appointing of commissions to carry out the different sanitary works that were required in Havana and all over the Island {140} in cities, towns and country districts. But, familiar as it now is, there will never be an account of this work which has made Cuba one of the healthiest places to live in either in or out of the tropics--there will never be a description so short that it cannot tell of the work of the unselfish, altruistic group of physicians who solved the yellow fever problem for all time. It gives him who writes even now something of a thrill to tell a little of it again and to pay tribute to the man who organized the work and to the men who carried it out under his unfailing support and encouragement. It is the greatest achievement of medicine since the discovery of the smallpox vaccine. It is one of the bright spots in the history of mankind.

Here it is told best by the organizer of it in his official language with all the reserve and reticence that go with all the writing he has ever issued. Between the lines one reads the story of a hundred cases of bravery as great as that required by any fighter in the world, a hundred instances of self-sacrifice and risk willingly given in those fever-stricken places and quarantined hospitals, freely {141} offered that those who came after might be saved from the black cloud which then hung over all tropical and semi-tropical countries.

In the Spring and summer of 1900 a yellow fever epidemic broke out in Havana and in many parts of the Island. All the sanitary methods known to man seemed to have no effect upon it. Nothing seemed to do much good.

At this point General Wood, knowing of the theory of Dr. Findlay that yellow fever was transmitted by the bite of a mosquito and at his wits' end to know what step to take next, received notice that a commission consisting of Drs. Reed, Carroll and Lazaer had been appointed to make a thorough study of the disease at first hand and report to him. "After several preliminary investigations Dr. Lazaer submitted himself as a subject for an experiment for the purpose of demonstrating that the yellow fever could be transmitted in this way. He was inoculated with an infected mosquito, took the fever and died. Dr. Carroll was also bitten and had a serious case of yellow fever, but fortunately recovered.

"The foregoing was the situation when Doctors {142} Reed, Carroll and Kean called at headquarters and stated that they believed the point had been reached where it was necessary to make a number of experiments on human beings and that they wanted money to pay those who were willing to submit themselves to these experiments and they needed authority to make experiments. They were informed that whatever money was required would be made available, and that the military Governor would assume the responsibility for the experiments. They were cautioned to make these experiments only on sound persons, and not until they had been made to distinctly understand the purpose of the same and especially the risk they assumed in submitting themselves as subjects for these experiments, and to always secure the written consent of the subjects who offered themselves for this purpose. It was further stipulated that all subjects should be of full legal age. With this understanding, the work was undertaken in a careful and systematic manner. A large number of experiments were made.

"The Stegomyia mosquito was found to be beyond question the means of transmitting the {143} yellow fever germ. This mosquito, in order to become infected, must bite a person sick with the yellow fever during the first five days of the disease. It then requires approximately ten days for the germs so to develop that the mosquito can transmit the disease, and all non-immunes who are bitten by a mosquito of the class mentioned, infected as described, invariably develop a pronounced case of yellow fever in from three-and-one-half to five days from the time they are bitten. It was further demonstrated that infection from cases so produced could be again transmitted by the above described type of mosquito to another person who would, in turn, become infected with the fever. It was also proved that yellow fever could be transmitted by means of introduction into the circulation of blood serum even after filtering through porcelain filters, which latter experiment indicates that the organism is exceedingly small, so small, in fact, that it is probably beyond the power of any microscope at present in use. It was positively demonstrated that yellow fever could not be transmitted by clothing, letters, etc., and that, consequently all the old {144} methods of fumigation and disinfection were only useful so far as they served to destroy mosquitoes, their young and their eggs." [Footnote: General Wood's Report on the military government of Cuba.]

That is the story of a work that has made Cuba a healthy land, that has freed the southern part of the United States forever from the dread disease, that has made the building of the Panama Canal a possibility and the Canal Zone healthier in death rate per thousand than New York City, that has finally rid the earth of yellow fever as vaccine rid it of smallpox and typhoid, and as the discoveries during the Great War have made it possible to check tetanus and typhus and bubonic plague.

It was done--the work was done--by the doctors named and their assistants and the many men who took up the burden in other places and carried on. All honor to them! But the man who approved the idea, who took the risk and the responsibility and backed up those who worked-- the man who kept in touch with it day by day and {145} saw that it was carried through--was Leonard Wood.

Simultaneously with these basic administrative activities many other lines of constructive state building were inaugurated, under the same administrative plan--the plan of the appointment of a specialist or a commission of specialists to draw up plans and report to the Governor-General who then decided and started the actual work of reorganization.

A railroad law was written, and General Wood persuaded General Grenville M. Dodge and Sir William Van Horn to help him to build much of the present railway system of Cuba. Hard modern roads took the place of the muddy routes almost impassable at certain seasons of the year which had been the only means of communication throughout the island. Hospitals and charities were grouped under a new organization consisting almost entirely of Cubans which renovated old hospitals, built new ones, put children first into temporary homes and then did away practically with asylums as soon as the destitute children could be put out among the Cuban families who {146} took them under a newly made law. Thus, in so far as was possible, no child from that time forward grew up with the stigma of an orphan asylum resting upon him or her, but had the chance offered to become in time a self-respecting inhabitant of a self-respecting community.