Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from works
Speaker 1: dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm turning
Speaker 1: tem Wilson and I'm Holly Fryed. So most people, at
Speaker 1: least in the United States have probably at least heard
Speaker 1: of Walter Reid, if only for the name of the
Speaker 1: Army Medical Center before it became kind of notorious due
Speaker 1: to a really huge neglect scandal in the late two thousands.
Speaker 1: It had previously made a name for itself as the
Speaker 1: heart of military medicine in the United States. UM. The
Speaker 1: Army Medical Center actually closed in eleven and was replaced
Speaker 1: by Walter read National Military Medical Center. So it's probably
Speaker 1: a surprise to no one that you know, the major
Speaker 1: military medical center in the United States was named for
Speaker 1: an Army doctor, and that was Walter Reid. Walter Reid
Speaker 1: did truly ground breaking work into the causes and prevention
Speaker 1: of yellow fever, which was a hugely destructive disease to
Speaker 1: the American military and to other militaries and to civilians
Speaker 1: outside of the military world, UM, both within and outside
Speaker 1: of the United States. But he really didn't do this
Speaker 1: all on his own. His accomplishments really built on a
Speaker 1: foundation of other doctors and other researchers. But even so,
Speaker 1: it had a huge and drastic impact on public health
Speaker 1: UH and on the American military's ability to work in
Speaker 1: tropical locations, which had previously been fraught with all kinds
Speaker 1: of health problems. So Walter Reed was born on September
Speaker 1: thirteenth of eighteen fifty one to Lemuel Sutton and Faraba
Speaker 1: White Red. Lemuel was a Methodist minister, and Walter had
Speaker 1: four older siblings, three brothers and one sister named Laura,
Speaker 1: who was the oldest. Because the elder Read was a minister,
Speaker 1: the family spent most of Walter's childhood moving from place
Speaker 1: to place as the Methodist Church assigned him to different congregations.
Speaker 1: Walter's older brothers, two of them Tom and James, fought
Speaker 1: for the South during the Civil War, which ran through
Speaker 1: Walter's early teenage years. After the war was over, Lemuel
Speaker 1: requested that he moved to Charlottesville, Virginia. He wanted his
Speaker 1: sons to be educated, and living in Charlottesville meant that
Speaker 1: they could go to the University of Virginia, and his
Speaker 1: request was indeed granted. Unfortunately, though Walter's mother died not
Speaker 1: long after they arrived in Charlottesville, and she was only
Speaker 1: forty one at that point. Walter was only fourteen, and
Speaker 1: it might have been her death that prompted him to
Speaker 1: really throw himself into his studies. He was just an
Speaker 1: exceptional student even before he started college. A sort of
Speaker 1: a side note, his father also remarried pretty quickly, and
Speaker 1: the rest of the family quickly became very fond of
Speaker 1: his new wife. Not long after his mother's death, Walter,
Speaker 1: now fifteen at this point, started school well. At the
Speaker 1: University of Virginia. Students normally could not enroll until they
Speaker 1: were sixteen, but exceptions were made if they had older
Speaker 1: brothers attending, and two of Walter's three older brothers were
Speaker 1: already in school there, although it turned out that Walter
Speaker 1: was the only one of them to graduate. He originally
Speaker 1: intended to study classics that he soon made the move
Speaker 1: to the medical program instead. This actually was largely due
Speaker 1: to financial and time reasons. It was faster and thus
Speaker 1: cheaper to get an m d than an m A,
Speaker 1: which probably seems extremely strange to people who are familiar
Speaker 1: with how much it takes to get a medical degree today,
Speaker 1: and Walter's medical training touches on a number of previous
Speaker 1: podcast subjects. So cadavers used for study were provided to
Speaker 1: the school by resurrectionists who stole them from local graveyards,
Speaker 1: which we talked about in our episode on the Doctor's Riot.
Speaker 1: And like many of the other historical doctors we've talked about,
Speaker 1: Walter's first round of medical study included almost no practical
Speaker 1: or clinical work. So when he graduated on July one,
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty nine, after just two years, and also as
Speaker 1: one of the youngest people to do it, he had
Speaker 1: to pursue another degree so that he could get more
Speaker 1: actual hands on experience being a doctor. And first the
Speaker 1: young doctor Reid went to New York, where he enrolled
Speaker 1: in Bellevue Hospital Medical College. He got another m d
Speaker 1: there in eighteen seventy, and since he'd taken care of
Speaker 1: most of his science and medical classes in Virginia, this
Speaker 1: was mostly hands on study, and then he went on
Speaker 1: to do internships at hospitals around New York. A lot
Speaker 1: of reads work during this time was with poor people
Speaker 1: in communities that didn't have a lot of medical resources,
Speaker 1: so he became increasingly aware of the kinds of diseases
Speaker 1: that really caused crises in the world of public health. Typhus, typhoid,
Speaker 1: and yellow fever, for example, were all diseases that could
Speaker 1: just ravage poor communities, and he started working to understand
Speaker 1: all of them. This is particularly true during the four
Speaker 1: months he spent working at King's County Hospital in Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: New York in eighteen seventy one, because that was a
Speaker 1: facility specifically for the poor. By eighteen seventy three, and
Speaker 1: at this point he was only twenty two, Read joined
Speaker 1: the Brooklyn Board of Health as an assistant sanitary officer,
Speaker 1: and this meant that he was too busy to start
Speaker 1: a private practice, and he was still so young that
Speaker 1: people didn't really seem to take him seriously. Reid started
Speaker 1: a doubt that he would ever be able to make
Speaker 1: the kind of change he wanted since he could not
Speaker 1: seem to get people to respect his knowledge in the
Speaker 1: medical field. So, seeing that he wasn't going to be
Speaker 1: able to make the kinds of strides that he really
Speaker 1: wanted to, he eventually decided to join the Army Medical Corps,
Speaker 1: which were a multi day multidisciplinary affair, in January of
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy five. Afterward, he was commissioned as a first
Speaker 1: lieutenant at the age of twenty four, and as all
Speaker 1: of this uh professional development was going on, Reid had
Speaker 1: been courting a woman named Emily Lawrence, primarily through letters.
Speaker 1: He had met her while visiting family in Murfreesboro, North Carolina,
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy four, and he married her on April
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy six before he left for Arizona Territory with
Speaker 1: the Medical Corps. He actually dinnerd quite a lot about
Speaker 1: getting married. He had some worries about what life was
Speaker 1: going to be like for the wife of a frontier
Speaker 1: army doctor. Um. He just sort of seemed concerned in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, and so she had to do
Speaker 1: some convincing, including kind of implying that perhaps someone else
Speaker 1: was interested in her, so maybe he ought to get
Speaker 1: his act together. Um. So when he did finally propose,
Speaker 1: it was pretty sudden. He basically proposed, and then they
Speaker 1: wedged the wedding into a window of time when he
Speaker 1: could actually make it to Murfreesboro to have the ceremony.
Speaker 1: The newly weds didn't actually get to live together until
Speaker 1: the following November, when Emily met him in San Francisco
Speaker 1: after taking a train which was a side note had
Speaker 1: some sort of wreck along the way across the country,
Speaker 1: and this was just the first of many separations they
Speaker 1: would endure due to his work, and they wrote each
Speaker 1: other volumes of letters during these times apart. It was
Speaker 1: also the first of many adventures in their marriage, because,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned earlier, a lot of his early career
Speaker 1: in the medical Corps involved him being a frontier doctor.
Speaker 1: He was moved from one post to another, and often
Speaker 1: their existence was really difficult and isolated, and a lot
Speaker 1: of the hospitals that he worked from were basically temporary
Speaker 1: structures meant to sort of serve a temporary need out
Speaker 1: on the frontier. They eventually had a son named Walter
Speaker 1: Lawrence and a daughter named Emily, who they called Blossom.
Speaker 1: Walter Senior most likely delivered his son himself, as at
Speaker 1: that point they were stationed at for Apache on the frontier.
Speaker 1: Also living with them for many years it was a
Speaker 1: young Native American girl named Susie, who Read had treated
Speaker 1: for serious burns after some sort of inter tribal battle.
Speaker 1: Susie wound up living with the family for about fifteen years.
Speaker 1: He was sort of a combinations surrogate daughter and help
Speaker 1: around the house. At first, Read was a frontier Army doctor,
Speaker 1: as we said, moving from garrison to garrison mostly around
Speaker 1: the American West, and these remote outposts did not have
Speaker 1: the sorts of facilities or resources that Read needed to
Speaker 1: continue his studies of bacteriology and pathology, so he requested
Speaker 1: a leave of absence. As Tracy said, a lot of
Speaker 1: these facilities were just temporary setups, so they were not
Speaker 1: going to have a lab where he could really do
Speaker 1: this work. Instead, he ended up transferred to Baltimore at
Speaker 1: a couple of points, which allowed him to work at
Speaker 1: Johns Hopkins University Hospital Pathology Laboratory. Two really monumental things
Speaker 1: happened in Read's life in eight and we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about them after a brief word from US sponsor.
Speaker 1: To get back to Walter, Read a couple of big things,
Speaker 1: as we said, before the break changed in his life.
Speaker 1: In one George Miller Sternberg became the Surgeon General and
Speaker 1: to the new Surgeon General established the Army Medical School.
Speaker 1: He did this kind of discreetly because Congress was reluctant
Speaker 1: to spend money in the wake of a financial panic.
Speaker 1: That year. Walter was named to the Army Medical schools faculty.
Speaker 1: At this point, Read had been promoted up through the
Speaker 1: ranks in the military to major. He was also appointed
Speaker 1: to be the curator of the Army Medical Museum and
Speaker 1: had become a faculty member at Columbian University, which would
Speaker 1: eventually become George Washington University. So, after years of moving
Speaker 1: from place to place, he and the family went to Washington,
Speaker 1: d c. And while he continued to travel for his work,
Speaker 1: this put an end to constantly uprooting the family to
Speaker 1: go to a new outpost. His early interest in public
Speaker 1: health played out in a study of the diseases that
Speaker 1: were most problematic to the military. So he studied typhoid, cholera, malaria,
Speaker 1: which was still pretty prevalent in the U S at
Speaker 1: the time, and yellow fever. In he studied a malaria
Speaker 1: outbreak that happened at Fort Meyer and at the Washington
Speaker 1: Army Barracks. There's actually a fair amount of medical work
Speaker 1: going on at this time that correctly identified the cause
Speaker 1: of malaria as a parasite that was spread by mosquitoes.
Speaker 1: But you know, the world of information spread being much
Speaker 1: uh more limited than it is today, this had not
Speaker 1: caught hold everywhere yet and read in particular, didn't think
Speaker 1: that the mosquito was the culprit, in part because he
Speaker 1: had spotted a number of errors in the latest paper
Speaker 1: that was promoting that connection. Instead, he thought it was
Speaker 1: bad air, which is not surprising. A lot of people
Speaker 1: thought it was bad air, and the world malaria comes
Speaker 1: from Italian terms for bad air. And while he was
Speaker 1: definitely on the wrong track, he did dispel the idea
Speaker 1: that malaria was water born. He pointed out that healthy
Speaker 1: people in Washington were using the same water source as
Speaker 1: six soldiers in Fort Meyer, and that saw the highest
Speaker 1: number of malaria cases in years, even though a water
Speaker 1: filtration program was in place. His research wound up looking
Speaker 1: at all kinds of factors and found all kinds of
Speaker 1: patterns and who got malaria and when. So even though
Speaker 1: he never arrived at the correct conclusion from all of it,
Speaker 1: it was useful data to have. The Spanish American War
Speaker 1: broke out in and it only went on for roughly
Speaker 1: three and a half months, and in the end the
Speaker 1: United States had temporary control of Cuba and had troops
Speaker 1: stationed there, but this came with a number of problems.
Speaker 1: Cuba's tropical climate was home to several diseases that US
Speaker 1: troops had little or no natural resistance to. Wilter Reid
Speaker 1: been extensive work pertaining to two of them, typhoid and
Speaker 1: yellow fever. During this period, the Secretary of War appointed
Speaker 1: a medical board that he directed to study diseases that
Speaker 1: were prevalent on Cuba. The Surgeon General also established a
Speaker 1: board specifically to study yellow fever, and for that board,
Speaker 1: Read was tapped to be head. He traveled back and
Speaker 1: forth between Washington and Cuba several times over the next
Speaker 1: several years working with these diseases. UH first typhoid fever,
Speaker 1: so not to be confused with typhus, which is spread
Speaker 1: by fleas. Typhoid fever is caused by bacteria Salmonilla typhee,
Speaker 1: which is spread through feces. Today, there is a vaccine
Speaker 1: for it and it's usually treatable with antibiotics, but that
Speaker 1: was not true in the eighteen hundreds. So typhoid is
Speaker 1: carried in the stools of infected people and it's transmitted
Speaker 1: by contact in one way or another with those infected stools.
Speaker 1: So that can mean flies crawling around on fece and
Speaker 1: then crawling around on food. It can also be transmitted
Speaker 1: when water or milk or are contaminated with infected feces,
Speaker 1: and people can continue to spread it even after they've
Speaker 1: recovered Allah the infamous typhoid Mary. At this time, the
Speaker 1: military had huge sanitation procedures in place to try to
Speaker 1: prevent the spread of typhoid, but many of them just
Speaker 1: weren't effective. They had to do with cleanliness and disposal
Speaker 1: of waste, but it's still spread from one infected person
Speaker 1: to another. Camps would be relocated entirely for fear of
Speaker 1: contaminated water sources. Although Reid was definitely involved in study
Speaker 1: and trying to come up with plans for how to
Speaker 1: prevent the spread of the disease, like new latrine designs
Speaker 1: to try to keep the waste away from other things.
Speaker 1: The primary researchers on it were Victor Vaughan and George Sternberg,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately their work didn't really get to a satisfy
Speaker 1: factory conclusion. During Reed's lifetime, they didn't manage to wipe
Speaker 1: out typhoid. It was basically endemic in the military, and
Speaker 1: efforts to clean up after it just were not enough.
Speaker 1: In the end, Vaccines, which were developed not long after
Speaker 1: the turn of the century, did a lot more to
Speaker 1: stop the disease than all of their hygiene efforts, which
Speaker 1: were just not sufficient. In the end, he took a
Speaker 1: much greater lead in the fight against yellow fever, and
Speaker 1: his work with yellow fever wound up being a lot
Speaker 1: more effective than the work of the team was doing
Speaker 1: to try to control typhoid. Yellow fever was a huge
Speaker 1: problem in Cuba as well as in parts of the
Speaker 1: United States. In less tropical parts of the world, the
Speaker 1: disease was fairly seasonal, with huge outbreaks when the weather
Speaker 1: was warm. It's a hemorrhagic disease that causes fever, joint pain, vomiting, hemorrhaging,
Speaker 1: bloodshot eyes, and jaundice. Yellow fever had two nicknames. One
Speaker 1: was yellow Jack, which obviously was because of the jaund
Speaker 1: and the other one and heads up, this is gross,
Speaker 1: was the black vomit because in the end stages of
Speaker 1: the disease, people would bleed into their digestive systems and
Speaker 1: then they would throw that up, and what they threw
Speaker 1: up was black because of the enzymes interacting with the blood.
Speaker 1: One of the worst parts of disease was that the
Speaker 1: symptoms often cleared up after a few days, which made
Speaker 1: people think they were going to survive, but then the
Speaker 1: symptoms would come back as the liver failed and the
Speaker 1: internal hemorrhaging started. It was absolutely horrifying, and the mortality
Speaker 1: rate was up to the prevailing theory before Walter Reid
Speaker 1: really got involved was that yellow fever was spread by fomites.
Speaker 1: And if you've ever played Plague, inc. You know that
Speaker 1: these are external objects that are capable of hanging onto
Speaker 1: and spreading disease. So when Native Americans contracted smallpox after
Speaker 1: being given blankets that had been used by smallpox patients,
Speaker 1: the blankets were fomites. However, some doctors already thought yellow
Speaker 1: fever was spread by mosquitoes before Walter Reid got involved.
Speaker 1: Cuban doctor Carlos Juan Finlay had first theorized that yellow
Speaker 1: fever was spread by mosquitoes as early as eighteen eighty one.
Speaker 1: He did a hundred and four different experiments between eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty one and to study the diseases spread. Most of
Speaker 1: Finlay's subjects were immigrant workers who allowed themselves to be
Speaker 1: bitten by mosquitoes that had bitten yellow fever patients. And
Speaker 1: it may seem kind of weird that people would be
Speaker 1: okay with this exposure without some kind of other incentive
Speaker 1: to to make it more enticing. But yellow fever was
Speaker 1: so widespread that pretty much everybody thought if you were
Speaker 1: in Havana long enough, you would eventually get it. So
Speaker 1: a lot of people were like, I might as well
Speaker 1: get it over with and actually have a doctor nearby
Speaker 1: if it's going to happen to me. Finlay even figured
Speaker 1: out which specific species he thought was at risk. This
Speaker 1: was a common household mosquito that the time was called
Speaker 1: q lex fasciatus, and now it's called eighties agip die
Speaker 1: and I hope I have pronounced that remotely right. But
Speaker 1: people did not take him seriously. This was in part
Speaker 1: because some of his experiments failed. He thought the mosquito
Speaker 1: bite was basically akin to a dirty needle. It was
Speaker 1: taking infected material from one person and putting it into
Speaker 1: another person. He also thought the sickest patients were going
Speaker 1: to be the ones most likely to transmit the disease
Speaker 1: to the mosquito. So this is not actually how yellow
Speaker 1: fever spreads, and we'll talk about that more in a moment,
Speaker 1: but that meant that, you know, a lot of his
Speaker 1: experiments did not result in somebody getting yellow fever, and
Speaker 1: people were sort of like, well, you're claiming it's the mosquitoes,
Speaker 1: but the mosquito, but that guy he's not sick, so
Speaker 1: you don't know what you're talking about. Walter Reid, for
Speaker 1: his part, worked with a team of other doctors, including
Speaker 1: Jesse Lizier, Aristides Eggramonte, and James Carroll. They worked not
Speaker 1: just off of Finlay's mosquito theory, but also off of
Speaker 1: actual mosquito eggs that Finlay collected. He figured out that
Speaker 1: if you dried out mosquito eggs, they would still hatch
Speaker 1: and mature with the right temperature and humidity. So, using
Speaker 1: Finlay's harvested mosquito eggs uh reading, his team ran a
Speaker 1: series of experiments. They hatched the mosquitoes from the eggs,
Speaker 1: and then they allowed them to bite someone who was
Speaker 1: infected with yellow fever. This is an extremely tedious, time
Speaker 1: consuming process. They would put the mosquito in a test tube,
Speaker 1: then put the test tube mouth down on somebody's skin,
Speaker 1: and then like wait for the mosquito to get to biting. Uh.
Speaker 1: They sort of tap the side of the test tube.
Speaker 1: If the mosquito was just perched on it not really
Speaker 1: doing anything, but really, this is like hurting cats. Mosquitoes
Speaker 1: do not feed on people on cue. This reminds me
Speaker 1: of an episode of UM, Why Am I blanking out?
Speaker 1: On the name of MythBusters. They were trying to get
Speaker 1: a skunk to spray them and they just couldn't. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like nature doesn't always do what you want
Speaker 1: in a lab like yes. Well, and it will also
Speaker 1: remind people of the saw Bones episode about self experimentation,
Speaker 1: because they talk about this part in in that episode.
Speaker 1: If you are a saw Bones fan, uh. And the
Speaker 1: team approached this in a methodical way, as methodical as
Speaker 1: you can be well trying to tap on a mosquito
Speaker 1: to get it to bite someone. Uh. And in a
Speaker 1: vast departure from much of the other research that we
Speaker 1: talked about on this podcast, they did not use unwilling
Speaker 1: organs and prisoners as test subjects. They used volunteers. These
Speaker 1: people gave their consent beforehand, and they were compensated for
Speaker 1: their participation a hundred dollars just for participating in another
Speaker 1: and another hundred dollars if they actually got stick. UM.
Speaker 1: This was basically revolutionary in the field of medical research.
Speaker 1: It's probably the first time that informed consent became a
Speaker 1: thing in Western medical study and research. And through these
Speaker 1: experiments they discovered a number of things about yellow fever transmission.
Speaker 1: In sting why some of Finley's experiments failed, it became
Speaker 1: clear as they went that mosquitoes could only pick up
Speaker 1: the virus from a sick person's blood two or three
Speaker 1: days after infection, and it took two weeks of for
Speaker 1: enough of the virus to reproduce inside the mosquito for
Speaker 1: someone it bit to get sick, so there was an
Speaker 1: incubation period that had not been accounted for, and after
Speaker 1: that the mosquito could then spread the disease for a
Speaker 1: couple of months. As a side note, this is why
Speaker 1: mosquitoes don't transmit HIV. HIV doesn't reproduce inside a mosquito's
Speaker 1: body the way yellow fever does. And this research was
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly successful, but it came at a cost. James Carroll,
Speaker 1: one of the researchers we mentioned earlier, was infected with
Speaker 1: yellow fever and he almost died. And this is reportedly
Speaker 1: because the mosquito in question had not eaten in about
Speaker 1: three days of them trying to coax it to bite someone,
Speaker 1: and they were afraid that if the mosquito starved to death,
Speaker 1: they were going to lose important data. So in sort
Speaker 1: of an act of desperation, what reportedly happened is that
Speaker 1: James Carroll let it bite him. There's this whole other
Speaker 1: weird thing in my head swirling about the idea of
Speaker 1: trying to keep mosquitoes as pets, almost for medical research,
Speaker 1: and it's very strange to think about. Um. And Jesse
Speaker 1: Lizier was infected with yellow fever, and he in fact
Speaker 1: did die. It's unclear whether this was part of an
Speaker 1: experiment or if this was an accident. Reports are contradictory.
Speaker 1: Some say that he did infect himself on purpose, and
Speaker 1: others say that he was bitten by a mosquito while
Speaker 1: working and thought it was a species that did not
Speaker 1: carry malaria. Regardless, his work before his death was absolutely
Speaker 1: critical to this experiment, and he left notebooks full of accurate,
Speaker 1: detailed data when he died, and without these notebooks the
Speaker 1: project probably would have failed. It could not have continued
Speaker 1: without his knowledge. Their research did not immediately gain traction.
Speaker 1: Back in the United States. An Italian doctor named Giuseppe
Speaker 1: Cinerelli had theorized that a basilus caused yellow fever, and
Speaker 1: even after this was disproved quite conclusively, he continued to
Speaker 1: insist that his basillas be named as the culprit. And
Speaker 1: this distracted from the real problem. Yeah, and when we
Speaker 1: say conclusively disproved, it involved things like during autopsies of
Speaker 1: people who had definitely died of yellow fever, his bacillus
Speaker 1: was not present and we were like, this is not it.
Speaker 1: But his advocacy for his basillus, which it was called
Speaker 1: his basillus um, really sidetracked things um. However, soon the
Speaker 1: army instituted mosquito control programs and yellow fever rates and
Speaker 1: Havannah plummeted. The United States Army was also soon able
Speaker 1: to get into areas where they previously couldn't because yellow
Speaker 1: fever was just too entrenched and basically trying to send
Speaker 1: troops there would have just caused everyone to get sick
Speaker 1: and die. Uh. An example is that the building of
Speaker 1: the Panama Canal really couldn't have happened without mosquito control
Speaker 1: programs to control the spread of yellow fever. Reid came
Speaker 1: back from Cuba in nineteen o one, and he continued
Speaker 1: to lecture on yellow fever. He received honorary degrees from
Speaker 1: Harvard and the University of Michigan. He was named librarian
Speaker 1: of the Surgeon General's Library in November of nineteen o two.
Speaker 1: Walter Reid died on November twenty three, nineteen o two,
Speaker 1: after developing parrotnitis, which followed a case of appendicitis, and
Speaker 1: his death came as somewhat of a shock. At least
Speaker 1: the illness is severity came as a shock. His symptoms
Speaker 1: just weren't as serious as would have been expected for
Speaker 1: a case of appendicitis that was advanced as advanced as
Speaker 1: his was, so uh when he became when it became
Speaker 1: clear that he was critically ill, people were really shocked
Speaker 1: by it. A vaccine for yellow feed or was developed
Speaker 1: in the nineties, and as we noted earlier while to read,
Speaker 1: Army Medical Center was named for him and for his work.
Speaker 1: I knew very little of him prior to this, so
Speaker 1: I'm glad you picked this one. I had. I remember
Speaker 1: we were driving around on probably Memorial Day, and there
Speaker 1: was a thing about him on public radio and I
Speaker 1: sort of caught the tail end of it and was
Speaker 1: just fascinated by the story. Um and then as things happened,
Speaker 1: I didn't think about it again until recently when I
Speaker 1: was trying to come up with an episode topic, and
Speaker 1: then I could not find I have no idea what
Speaker 1: this story was that I heard on NPR. I searched
Speaker 1: all kinds of things to try to find it so
Speaker 1: I could listen to the whole thing. If you know
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about, please email us a link so
Speaker 1: I can hear the whole thing. Um, would you like
Speaker 1: to read a listener mail? I would, Uh, this is
Speaker 1: from Carina, and so Corina sent us this male coincidentally
Speaker 1: between when we recorded our episode on Sylvia Rivera and
Speaker 1: when that episode came out, and in the Sylvia Rivera
Speaker 1: episode we talk as briefly in a side it's basically
Speaker 1: a mention of an organization called the Young Lords. And
Speaker 1: so this was completely a coincidence that this mail happened
Speaker 1: to come in at this point, which is why I
Speaker 1: wanted to read it. And Corina says, Hello, Tracy and Holly,
Speaker 1: huge fan of the show. We keep her company on
Speaker 1: her commute to and from work. She says, I'm writing
Speaker 1: because it's the time of year where we officially celebrate
Speaker 1: Latino heritage. Month September fift to October. I am a
Speaker 1: Latina from the Bronx, New York and I have a
Speaker 1: great topic you ladies can talk about, the Young Lords.
Speaker 1: I was fortunate enough to meet one of the New
Speaker 1: York City Young Lords member, Miguel Mickey Melendez, and he
Speaker 1: inspired me beyond words. The Young Lords was an organization
Speaker 1: of activists dedicated to human liberation and the independence of
Speaker 1: Puerto Rico. And that is from UH an organization about
Speaker 1: the Young Lords. They started with the liberation of Puerto
Speaker 1: Rico but left a mark on Latino's and inner cities.
Speaker 1: They were seen as terrors to the police, but as
Speaker 1: savior store people in inner cities living in horrible conditions.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy, Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx was
Speaker 1: one of the worst in the city. The building was
Speaker 1: falling apart, children were getting lead poisoning while hospitalized. There
Speaker 1: there were rats in the emergency room. The Young Lords
Speaker 1: and a group called the h r u M Health
Speaker 1: Revolutionary Unity Movement established a ten point health program calling for,
Speaker 1: among other things, community worker control, health institutions, lead poisoning
Speaker 1: and anemia testing, and daycare centers. The Young Lords also
Speaker 1: received and reported to the city government hundreds of complaints
Speaker 1: directed the Lincoln Hospital facilities. Since the hospital failed to
Speaker 1: respond on the group decided to take stronger measures. That
Speaker 1: the city and the staff were not going to help
Speaker 1: the sick than the Young Lords believed, it was up
Speaker 1: to the community to do so. During the early morning
Speaker 1: hours of July fourteenth, nine seventy, the Young Lords and
Speaker 1: a patient worker group called Think Lincoln Committee took over
Speaker 1: Lincoln Hospital. During the twenty four hour takeover, the Young
Speaker 1: Lords ran health programs in a building the hospital was
Speaker 1: not even using. Here, they held TV and lead poison
Speaker 1: detection and set up a daycare that would later be
Speaker 1: put to service. Eventually, the police surrounded the hospital and
Speaker 1: the Young Lords left peacefully. The offensive exposed the terrible
Speaker 1: conditions seen in inner city hospitals. The building Lincoln Hospital
Speaker 1: was in had been condemned by the city twenty years before,
Speaker 1: and nothing had been done to address this problem. The
Speaker 1: group got a promise from then Mayor John Lindsay to
Speaker 1: construct a new hospital on East A hundred and forty
Speaker 1: ninth Street. In the end, the takeover of Lincoln Hospital
Speaker 1: was a victory for the community. It would be great
Speaker 1: if you could talk about this on the show. Thanks Karina,
Speaker 1: And as I mentioned earlier, I wanted to read this
Speaker 1: because we mentioned the Young Lords uh and basically a
Speaker 1: sentence in our episode about Sylvia Rivera, but we really
Speaker 1: didn't talk about much of their activities or their philosophy
Speaker 1: or anything. It was basically a Puerto Rican nationalist group.
Speaker 1: So um, there is definitely a much broader story about
Speaker 1: uh the Young Lords than just this one story. But
Speaker 1: I wanted to read the just this one story because
Speaker 1: we had not really talked about that in the episode.
Speaker 1: It was kind of aside from the major subject matter.
Speaker 1: And she included show much great information in that email.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, like that's like a mini episode on its own.
Speaker 1: She did a really awesome job. So if you would
Speaker 1: like to write to us with other stories about things
Speaker 1: that we mentioned that you somehow have have intuited that
Speaker 1: we are going to mention later, is what happened here?
Speaker 1: Or if you want to tell me what was up
Speaker 1: with this well to read episode that I heard five
Speaker 1: minutes of over Memorial Day weekend, You can write to
Speaker 1: us for a history five acid how Stuff Works dot
Speaker 1: com for us, also on Facebook at Facebook dot com
Speaker 1: slash miss in History and on Twitter at miss in History.
Speaker 1: Our tumbler is missed in History dot tumbler dot com,
Speaker 1: and we're also on Pinterest at pinterest dot com slash
Speaker 1: missed in History. We have a spread shirt store where
Speaker 1: you can buy shirts and iPhone cases and things, and
Speaker 1: that is that missed in History dot s redshirt dot com.
Speaker 1: If you would like to learn more about what we've
Speaker 1: talked about today, you can come to our parent company's website,
Speaker 1: that is how stuff Works dot com and put the
Speaker 1: word Walter read into the search bar. You will find
Speaker 1: the article ten ways Army doctors prevent troop Illnesses UM.
Speaker 1: You can also come to our website where we put
Speaker 1: up links to every single episode we have on archive
Speaker 1: of every episode ever, show notes for all of our
Speaker 1: episodes where you can see the sources that we've used
Speaker 1: to research all of these. So you can do all
Speaker 1: of that and a lot more at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com and miss in history dot com for more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other top fix because it
Speaker 1: has to have works dot com in