Could you have
a good sale for
your chickens?
How many acres
have you?
WAR DEPARTMENT,
SURGEON GENERAL'S OFFICE,
ARMY MEDICAL MUSEUM AND LIBRARY,
WASHINGTON.

March 26, 1901.

My Darling Sister:

    Here I am
back once more in the Lord's
Country & with wife and chick,
after a stay of many months
in Cuba. Not a bad country
that Cuba, if there were not
so many Cuban's there! It
has a great many advan=
tages over this Climate in
the matter of coolness in Summer
(of course, you are surprised, but
it is true,) and warmth in Win=
ter! Think of [a] land where Jack
Frost and his brother, Boreas,
never show their ugly faces!
Oh! I forgot your darling letter
of February 16^th, which reached
me in Cuba, & which I am now
trying to answer. If you wrote
me from Lynchburg, last Summer,
I never got it - You know, or
probably do not, that an order,
early last June, sent me
right down right into the
midst of yellow fever at
Havana - Indeed I was sent
down for the sole purpose
of studying that disease -
Dr. Lazear, of Baltimore, and Dr.
Carroll, my assistant here,
went with me - Both contrac-
ted the disease, & my dear friend
Lazear, died of that disease!
As for myself, I suppose
that I was hardly worth
killing & so escaped, although
coming into the most intimate
daily contact, but I never per-
mitted a mosquito to bite me!!
After much work & thinking,
I am glad to say that we have
been able to prove conclusively
that yellow fever is propaga-
ted only by the bite of a certain
kind of mosquito, provided it
has bitten a case of yellow
fever about 12 days before.
My friends pronounce it a very
great discovery and some even
write me that, for America,
it means more than any
discovery for the last 100
years! Dr. Carter, of the Marine
Hospital Service, writes that my
discovery makes the [me one of the] greatest bene-
factor that the human race has ever had!
of course, when one has left
wife & baby, and faced death &
won a victory, it makes him
happy, but it shouldn't turn his
head - He should only thank
God that his life hasn't been
in vain, & go on about his
business - That's what I am
now doing - I like that scheme
about poultry-raising - The only
thing that I n ever [knew] any thing about
is raising chickens! I can beat
the world at that. Why don't you
begin in a modest way and then
expand gradually - I do wish
that I could run down to see
you & the babies, but my hands
are tied on an Examining Board
for the present - Emily & our big
daughter are well & would send much
love did they know that I was writing.
The boy is a lieutenant in the 10^th Inf.
Much love to Nita & the others - write
me again about that chicken scheme -

Devotedly,

Walter.
237836