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CHAPTER XI

WALTER REED

IN THE INTEREST OF SCIENCE—AND FOR HUMANITY!

I

With yellow fever it was different—there were no brawls about it.

Everybody is agreed that Walter Reed—head of the Yellow Fever Commission—was a courteous man and a blameless one, that he was a mild man and a logical: there is not one particle of doubt he had to risk human lives; animals simply will not catch yellow fever!

Then it is certain that the ex-lumberjack, James Carroll, was perfectly ready to let go his own life to prove Reed's point, and he was not too sentimental about the lives of others when he needed to prove a point—which might and might not be what you would call a major point.

All Cubans (who were on the spot and ought to know) are agreed that those American soldiers who volunteered for the fate of guinea-pigs were brave beyond imagining. All Americans who were then in Cuba are sure that those Spanish immigrants who volunteered for the fate of guinea-pigs were not brave, but money-loving—for didn't each one of them get two hundred dollars?

Of course you might protest that fate hit Jesse Lazear a hard knock—but it was his own fault: why didn't he brush that mosquito off the back of his hand instead of letting her drink her fill? Then, too, fate has been kind to his memory; the United States Government named a Battery in Baltimore Harbor in his honor! And that same government has been more than

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