Letter of the Day: July 3 (2 of 2) - a new curator

Curatorial Records: Numbered Correspondence 6836

War Department,
Surgeon General’s Office,
Washington, July 3, 1903.

ORDERS:

First Lieutenant James Carroll, Assistant Surgeon, U.S. Army, is hereby assigned to duty as Curator of the Army Medical Museum, and will report in person to Colonel Calvin DeWitt, Assistant Surgeon General, U.S. Army, in charge of Museum and Library Division of this office.

Robert O’Reilly
Surgeon General, U.S. Army.

Colonel Calvin DeWitt,
Assistant Surgeon General, U.S. Army,
in charge of Museum & Library Division,
Surgeon General’s Office.

Letter of the Day: May 25 - yellow fever

Curatorial Records: Numbered Correspondence 4606

War Department,
Office of the Surgeon General,
Army Medical Museum and Library,
Washington,
May 25, 1900

Dr. Jesse Lazaer
Actg. Asst. Surgeon, U.S.A.
Camp Columbia
Quemados, Cuba

My Dear Doctor:

An order issued yesterday from the War Department, calls for a Board of Medical Officers for the investigation of acute infectious diseases occurring on the Island of Cuba. The Board consists of Carroll, yourself, Agramonte and the writer. It will be our duty, under verbal instructions from the Surgeon General, to continue the investigation of the causation of yellow fever. The Surgeon General expects us to make use of the laboratory at Military Hospital No. 1, used by Agramonte, and your laboratory at Camp Columbia.

According to the present plan, Carroll and I will be quartered at Camp Columbia. We propose to bring with us our microscopes and such other apparatus as may be necessary for bacteriological and pathological work. If, therefore, you will promptly send me a list of apparatus on hand in your laboratory, it will serve as a very great help in enabling us to decide as to what we should include in our equipment. Any suggestions that you have to make will be much appreciated.

Carroll and I expect to leave New York, on transport, between the 15th and 20th of June, and are looking forward, with much pleasure, to our association with you and Agramonte in this interesting work. As far as I can see we have a year or two of work before us. Trusting that you will let me hear from you promptly, and with best wishes,

Sincerely yours,

Walter Reed
Major & Surgeon,
U.S. Army

Letter of the Day: February 16 1 of 2

Note the continuing confusion of types of fevers. Dale Smith's written an excellent paper on this. Carroll had made his reputation working with Walter Reed on yellow fever a few years earlier. The cause of the anemia he refers to would eventually be defined by US Army doctor Bailey Ashford.

War Department,
Office of the Surgeon General,
Army Medical Museum and Library,
Washington

February 16, 1904

Private Julian W. Moody,
Hospital Corps, U.S.A.
(Through the Surgeon, Fort Monroe, Va.).

Sir

I have to acknowledge the receipt of a bottle of sputum containing tubercle bacilli, and thank you for sending it. This is material we can usually obtain in abundance. If you could send me, however, at any time specimens of blood showing quartan or aestivo-autumnal malarial parasites, pernicious or secondary anemia, eosinophilia or any marked pathological condition of the blood, I shall be very glad to have them.

Respectfully,

James Carroll

1st Lieut. Asst. Surgeon, U.S.A.
Curator, Army Medical Museum

More good stuff from the Registry

I finally got back to work on the Registry of Noteworthy Research in Pathology and today found some letters.

James Carroll was a Major in the Army who worked with Walter Reed on his yellow fever research. He volunteered to be bitten by a mosquito that had previously bitten three others who had yellow fever. He contracted the disease and several years later died of cardiac disease that was attributed to his bout of yellow fever.

Here's a letter from the President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, petitioning a Congressman to grant a special pension to Carroll's widow.

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And here is the Congressman's reply.






















Maybe I'm missing something, but I thought being a Major in the Army meant you were in military service to your country.