Biographical sketch of Walter Reed, by Emilie Lawrence Reed, [n.d.] |
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[from Mrs. Reed] Dr. Reed received his commission in the Army on the 26th of
June, 1875. His first station was at Willett's Point where he served
until the following spring. He was then ordered for duty in Arizona.
He often laughed over his first interview with the Surgeon-General.
To a first Lieutenant of the Medical Corps its Chief is looked upon
with great awe, a being who had you completely under his power, to
extoll or condemn you at his will. After receiving his orders for Ari-
zona he went to Washington for the express purpose of having an inter-
view with "his Highness", for there was a problem to be solved that
was very dear to his heart. He was engaged to be married and the time
for its consummation was even arranged. To take a young wife to a
country so rough and uncivilized, a country that he was in no way
familiar with, troubled his sensitive nature terribly--So there was
nothing left him but an interview with the Surgeon-General. He was
as brave as a soldier should be, but when after being ushered in and
introducing himself, there was a peremptory command in a very gruff
tone "Sit down!" the young officer quailed and immediately obeyed his
first orders. Then came the abrupt question "What do you want?" "I
would like to know, General, if I can get [a] leave while I am in Arizone.
I am engaged to be married and would want to return." The voice was
gruffer still and the face more stern as he replied, "Young man, if you
don't want to go to Arizone resign from the Service." Then the youth's
spirit arose, all fear fled, and it was man answering man--"General,
I did not labor for my commission with the will I did to throw it away
so hastily, nor can you deprive me of it till I act so unworthily as
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to cause dismissal." The old man liked the spirit that his subordi-
nate showed, and his manner changed at once. "Have a cigar, Dr. Reed,
and let's talk it over," he said in quite a genial tone. "This is the
advice I give you. Don't marry now--go to Arizona and no doubt some
soldier will become insane, you can bring him East, there will be your
chance for your wedding." The interview was over, but the advice
was not taken. The wedding took place, but the young officer went to
the frontier alone as he wished to ascertain first the hardships that
would have to be endured. in so far distant and wild a country. He often laughed in after years at the patience he would have
had to exercise, had he taken the Surgeon-General's advice, for he
had been married thirteen years before he was ordered to Washington
to escort an officer to St. Elizabeth's Asylum. Arizona seemed as remote twenty-five years ago as do the
Philippines now. He served four years there, part of the time at
Camp Apache, seven hundred miles from the railroad, the mail only ar-
rived once a week, and often letters from the East were en route six
weeks. Although there were savage bands of Indians near the Post, he
was never out in the field while there, and yet so many times he just
escaped danger, perhaps death. In moving from Fort Rowell [Lowell] to Apache,
a journey of eleven days, where he and his wife and an escort of two
soldiers camped on a quiet plain one night, three days afterwards it
was a scene of frightful carnage--two hostile tribes met and a bloody
fight ensued. When his detail was over and he started East a brother
officer urged him to stop over at his Post, which was on the stage
line, and spend twenty-four hours with him, but his wife and baby boy
had been separated from him for many months, and he often said that
his eagerness to see them saved his life, for the stage that he would
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have taken the next day was waylaid by the Navajoes and the driver
killed. During those four years there were three changes of station,
one taking twenty-two days of day traveling and camping out at night.
Dr. Reed always saw the ludicrous side of things, and there were many
laughable experiences that he had jotted down. Unfortunately, the
diary in one of the many subsequent moves was lost. The Indians near-
est the Post were friendly and he often went out to prescribe for the
sick, and was as painstaking with them as with any other patient, al-
though he well knew that the Medicine Man's word had much more weight
than his, and that the latter's drum and rattle would be persistently
beaten at the sick man's bedside after he had given a narcotic. These
Indians were very fond of him, and showed their good will by often bring-
ing as a present a haunch of venison. If no one was in the house to
receive it they would walk steathlily in and lay it on his wife's white
m e [u] slin dressing table, or take a picture from the wall and hang it
there. It seems strange that with all of his Western service he was
never called to the field, yet he had only been a short while at the
Johns Hopkins when his services were needed out in the Dakotas in the
campaign against the Sioux. It was not that in any way he tried to escape hardships, for
where duty called him he was ever ready to go. It just so happened
that the Indians had given trouble and were quiet when he arrived at
a Frontier Post, or else soon after he would be ordered away. As soon
as war was declared between Spain and the United States, he went to
the Surgeon-General and urged that he be sent to the front, or if his
services were not needed in the Army, that he would like to offer him-
self to the Navy, but the Surgeon-General told him that he had other
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work for him, and he felt greatly humiliated that he was kept at Wash-
ington doing, as he expressed it, office work, while nearly all of his
brother officers were actively engaged. And not until he was put on
the Typhoid Board, composed of Majors Vaughan, Shakespeare and himself,
of which he was the senior member, did he feel that enough duty had
been imposed upon him. That was a labor that engaged him earnestly
for two years, and the midnight work spent upon it was what first un-
dermined his health. As a Post Surgeon his courtesy, his genial ways and his over-
flowing spirits won him hosts of friends. His devotion to his patients
never flagged. Many times when an urgent call came, though he himself
was in bed with a high fever and being cared for by the Hospital
Steward, he would get up, ill as he was, sit down repeatedly while
dressing for lack of strength, and start out, though deep snow was on
the ground and the thermometer far below zero. Several times he was
so ill that he would have to lie down before being able to see the pa-
tient. So great was his devotion to little children that if the lit-
tle one's life was in danger, and he thought that through ignorance
his injunctions would not be properly carried out, he would plead with
his wife that it be brought home, but she, seeing that the home life
would eventually be gone and a hospital on a small scale would take its
place, would have to strenuously oppose it. The more humble the pati-
ent the greater was his care and devotion, for his big heart always
went out to those who walked in the lower sphere of life. I wish the
writer had access to a letter sent to the War Department about two
years ago. A poor old man whom Dr. Reed had befriended while he was
stationed in Alabama had seen in an Alabama paper a premature notice
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of Dr. Reed's death. A more beautiful tribute was never paid a man--
and it touched Dr. Reed deeply when the Department forwarded it to him
while he was in Cuba. With all of his gentleness and milk of human
kindness, honor and justice were strongly impla [n] ted in his nature, and
he never allowed anyone, even a superior officer, to impose upon his
rights. No matter when the call came he responded. Once in western
Nebraska in the depths of winter when a blizzard had been raging and
the thermometer was below zero, a man came from twelve miles in the
country for him to go to his sick wife. He started at sunset in a
driving wind, there were no landmarks, only this vast plain of snow
that stretched miles and miles ahead of him, so no wonder that he be-
came lost and on his faithful horse wandered aimlessly about till mid-
night, when suddenly from behind a snowdrift a little beacon of light
appeared and he found the little hut he had for so many hours been in
pursuit of. The woman was quite ill and he did not leave her bedside
till late the next afternoon. Again he was lost, and did not reach his
own fireside till nearly eleven o'clock. s [S] tiff with cold and weary from
the long ride, yet after the welcome home his face brightened and he
broke out into a merry laugh as he recalled his host of the day. While
sitting before a three-legged stove, waiting for the coffee to boil
(the odor emanating from it rudely telling that the dregs of many days
were within the pot) the old man drawled out, "Well,Doc, I often feels
sorry for you folks at the Post, I know you gits lonely". The Post
consisted of four companies of Cavalry, Headquarters and the band, and
the railroad station was within sight. Dr. Reed was at the same time
inwardly commiserating the utter loneliness of this poor man and woman
in their remote desolation. In starting out on such trips his wife
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would plead with him not to venture, that his life was too valuable
for such hazards. It was only under these circumstances that he
would not yield to her persuasions. In any other matter he would seek
her advice. Several times during his Post life he thought that the Com-
manding Officer was taking undue authority and at once appealed to
higher powers, knowing that he was in the right and that the unbiased
law would decide with him, and it always did. Once while a soldier was
still on sick report, the Commanding Officer saw him out taking a
walk and ordered him to duty, saying that if he was well enough to be out
[he was well enough to] work, Dr. Reed's anger was greatly aroused, and justly so, but he could
always control himself and rise superior to the occasion. Without a
spoken word to the Commanding Officer, he sent a written communication
through the Commanding Officer to Headquarters, asking would such in-
justice be allowed. The paper was promptly returned through the
proper channels with a severe reprimand to the Commanding Officer, and
as he read it and handed it to his adjutant to be forwarded to Dr.
Reed, his remark was, "Blank the Doctors, Mr. Adjutant, we can never
get ahead of them." "Next to Godliness, cleaniness"--he carried it out to the
letter in his Hospitals. He took the greatest interest in them, and
and the Hospital Corps. His men quickly imbibed his enthusiasm and
his methods, consequently order and neatness prevailed. Drinking he
would not permit, and several Hospital Stewards have afterwards thanked
him so graciously for the pledge that he would keep them bound to
while under his service. His love for nature knew no bounds, and however barren the
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spot he would soon have a garden blossoming with flowers and laden
with vegetables for the Hospital. It was a familiar sight to see him
after an early sick call going back home laden with flowers. After
four years in Nebraska he looked upon Alabama, with its balmy sun-
shine and exquisite flowers as a well chosen spot, and it was there
that he converted a sandy waste into a most beautiful garden. The mag-
nolia tree is indigenous to Southern Alabama, and wishing to trans-
plant two in his Hospital yard he took long walks through the woods
in order to find suitable ones. A native seeing the trees after they
were set out went to him and begged that they might be uprooted as it
was firmly believed in that section of the country that if they lived
some member of his family would die within twelve months. He was
absolutely free from supersitition and saying he would teach those peo-
ple a lesson, he scoured the woods till he found sufficient small trees
to set out a whole row! Under his careful supervision they all lived,
and no member of the family died, but it is not known if it killed the
[?] supersition. In 1889 while serving in Nebraska, he felt that having
been in the West for so long he wished to freshen himself by a course
at the Johns Hopkins. So he applied for a leave, stating the purpose
of the leave; the reply came from Headquarters that if he would pay
the salary of a contract surgeon, his services would be spared. His
disappointment was bitter, but fortune soon smiles, for under a new
regime so much interest was manifested in his application that he was
ordered on duty in Baltimore expressly that he might take his desired
course of study. During the winter he was at the Hopkins he made some of his
warmest friends, and his remembrances of them and his work there were
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fraught with unalloyed pleasure. Of his nine years work at the museum
there were many annoyances and interruptions. His beloved teacher,
Prof. Welch, had opened the door of a new world to him, and his active
brain had grasped many things with avidity. Consequently, when a new
idea would seize him and he was all eagerness to seek his laboratory and
begin investigations, it does not take even a man of science to see
how obnoxious Boards of Survey, Examining Boards, and all other sim-
ilar details were to him. When the word on yellow fever in Cuba was first discussed
by the surgeon-General, Dr. Reed not being an immune [immune] his orders were
not compulsory, but the suggestion once being made to him, he was all
eagerness to go, and remarked that he did not see why he should not
look upon the Surgeon-General's wishes as an order. It was only the
thought of his wife and daughter that made him hesitate for one mo-
ment, for he fully realized that should he meet his death, how changed
would be their life, and for a while his love for them and his interest
in their welfare held him silent. But a mind so imbued with the love
of research as was his could not be held back, and it was not long be-
fore he asked that the order be issued. It read as a death knell to
his wife, and she knows to-day that the strain and anxiety that he un-
derwent when so many lives were at "peril was the rift within the lute."
Bacon tells us of the vain glories of ambition, but when his great
work was accomplished it was only happiness that filled [his ] soul for the
suffering he would spare humanity. He rejoiced that he had not lived
in vain and that God had seen fit to make him an instrument of good. And now for one brief moment let us lift the scared veil that
screened his home life and step within the threshold.
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"Love ever at my fireside,
And peace within my door,"
was the motto of his selection. The consideration and gentleness that
he showed to the world was intensified at home. All that love, self-
sacrifice and devotion could bring, he laid upon the family altar and
worshipped there. In his City life he was too burdened with his many
duties to lay them aside in his office; his labor continued after
reaching home, and he took but little time for diversion. But once in
the country at his little summer home that he loved so well, he threw
science to the winds and became a true child of nature. He would
awaken with the birds, and often at five o-clock be out in the garden
with his hoe. It was with true delight that he viewed his possessions,
he who for so many years had led a wanderer's life. He who could plan
an investigation in the microscopic world that yeilded such results,
could also plan a home, and many wondered at the beautiful Country place
on the hillside that had grown out of a rocky field. He often remark-
ed that he looked for his happiest years after retirement when he could
settle there. But he is gone. He gave his life to his country.
Science overmastered his heart, and the mind was too weighty for the
fragile body that enfolded it and it crumbled.
[Please end with the following lines- ]
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"I would the great world grew like thee
Who grewest not alone in power
And knowledge, but by year and hour
In reverence and in charity." The fame is quench'd that I foresaw
The head hath miss'd an earthly wreath
I curse not nature, no, nor death;
For nothing is that errs from law. We pass; the path that each man trod
Is dim, or will be dim, with weeds
What fame is left for human deeds
In endless ages. It rests with God. |
