GAIL DRAKE: Jesse Lazear: Courage of a soldier, care of a doctor

“A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good.”

— Luke 6:45

On a hot September afternoon near Havana, Cuba, a 34-year-old doctor leaned over his research desk and watched the larvae hatching from aedes aegypti mosquito eggs. A physician trained at Johns Hopkins Hospital, with specialization training in Paris at the Institut Pasteur, he then reported for duty as a U.S. Army assistant surgeon and continued his research of tropical diseases such as malaria. A few months later, Dr. Lazear was appointed to the Yellow Fever Board chaired by his friend, Dr. Walter Reed. His specimens came from the laboratory of Cuban doctor Carlos Finley, who two decades before had argued that mosquitoes transmitted the dreaded disease. The medical community had disregarded the Cuban doctor.

The Spanish American War had been raging, and yellow fever had claimed the lives of 3,000 American soldiers. Named for the skin color from liver damage, disease symptoms included fever, chills, headaches, muscle aches and nausea. Patients who didn’t recover experienced delirium, blood vomit and kidney failure.

Outbreaks of this “Yellow Jack” were first recorded during colonial days and accounted for at least 40,000 casualties in the Caribbean islands during the Napoleonic Wars. In February 1793, yellow fever hit Philadelphia (then the largest city and capital of the new nation), imported by French refugees from Haiti. The outbreak claimed the lives of 5,000 in the city of 50,000, and by September, 20,000 had fled the city, including President George Washington, government leaders, businessmen — and most doctors. Initial efforts to quarantine the refugees were not enforced, and the epidemic raged until the November frost.

Over the next century, yellow fever traveled up the Mississippi River Valley (20,000 dead), to Memphis Tenn., (5,100), and plagued Savannah (650), Norfolk Va., (2,000), and New Orleans, with several epidemics. The disease was blamed on astronomy, bad coffee, drinking river water, soiled clothing and bedding, and insects.

Now Dr. Jesse Lazear was exploring Finley’s “mosquito hypothesis.” He let the newly hatched mosquitoes feed on yellow fever patients at a Havana hospital. Then he allowed them to feed on study volunteers. Two volunteers fell ill but recovered. Lazear wrote home to his wife on Sept. 8, 1900, “I rather think I am on the track of the real germ.” He then deliberately allowed an infected mosquito to bite him. Two weeks later, after days of delirium and black vomit, Dr. Lazear died. He left behind a wife and two small children.

Reed was in Washington at the time but returned to Cuba, committed to continuing Lazear’s work. In Havana, the U.S. Army sent “mosquito brigades” to limit mosquito breeding in stagnant waters. They covered cisterns with netting and poured small amounts of kerosene into water to suffocate larvae. The following year, yellow fever claimed only one life in the Cuban capital. Dr. William Gorgas used these mosquito control methods to contain the disease while building the Panama Canal.

Reed is credited as the American physician whose breakthrough in yellow fever research was a milestone in biomedicine. He repeatedly gave credit to Finley and sought to honor his fellow researchers, including his fallen friend.

“I lament his loss more than words can tell; but his death was not in vain. His name will live in the history of those who have benefited humanity,” Reed said.

Today a stained-glass tribute to Lazear hangs in the War Memorial Chapel of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. A brass plaque at Johns Hopkins Hospital memorializes his sacrifice: “With more than the courage and devotion of the soldier, he risked and lost his life to show how a fearful pestilence is communicated and how its ravages may be prevented.”

Jesse William Lazear, M.D., U.S. Army MC: An American hero.

Lest we forget.