The Physician to Soldier Pipeline · Episode 3 of 14 · 23 min
Thirty Years Late
The Army Medical School opened on June 24, 1893, thirty years after a Surgeon General asked for one, built with no money out of institutions the Army already owned. Five years later the camps of 1898 showed that a school is not a pipeline, as typhoid killed more than fifteen hundred soldiers. The yellow fever commission of 1900 then validated Carlos Finlay's earlier hypothesis.
Who's who
- George Miller SternbergSurgeon General who founded the Army Medical School
- Walter Reed+2 more episodesArmy major, typhoid board member and yellow fever commission director
- Carlos Finlay+2 more episodesCuban physician who proposed the mosquito hypothesis in 1881
- Jesse Lazear+1 more episodeContract surgeon on the yellow fever commission; died of it
- William Crawford Gorgas+1 more episodeHavana sanitary officer who ended yellow fever there
- Clara MaassAmerican nurse who died after volunteering to be bitten
- Abraham FlexnerEducator whose 1910 report reshaped medical education
- Theodore Roosevelt+14 more episodesPresident who signed the bill creating the Medical Reserve Corps
Where it happens
- Washington, D.C.+31 more episodesWhere the Army Medical School was founded
- Camp Lazear, CubaSite of the decisive yellow fever experiments
- Havana, Cuba+1 more episodeCity where Gorgas ran his mosquito campaign
Timeline
- 1881Carlos Finlay proposes that a mosquito transmits yellow fever
- June 24, 1893The Army Medical School is established
- 1898More than 20,000 typhoid cases and over 1,500 deaths in Spanish-American War camps
- November 20, 1900Yellow fever experiments begin at Camp Lazear
- April 23, 1908Roosevelt signs the bill creating the Medical Reserve Corps
- June 1910Flexner's report is published by the Carnegie Foundation
Still debated
Historians disagree on whether Jesse Lazear infected himself deliberately, on the typhoid death toll, and on whose experiment Clara Maass died in. How much of medical school consolidation Flexner actually caused is also an open question.
Connected episodes in other series
Conquering the Jungle: How a Doctor Nobody Believed Won the Panama CanalPanama: Crossroads of Empires · Episode 9Also features Carlos Finlay, Theodore Roosevelt
Yellow Fever: The Disease That Forced Washington Into Public HealthThe U.S. Public Health Service · Episode 11Also features Carlos Finlay, Jesse Lazear
The Poison Squad and The JungleSafe to Eat? American Food Safety · Episode 3Also features Theodore Roosevelt
The 1922 Deal That Split a River That Didn't Have Enough WaterCalifornia and Water · Episode 3Also features Theodore Roosevelt