Major Walter Reed, M.D., U.S. Army (September 13, 1851 â€" November
22, 1902), was a U.S. Army physician who in 1901, led the team that
confirmed the theory of the Cuban doctor Carlos Finlay that yellow
fever is transmitted by a particular mosquito species, rather than by
direct contact. This insight gave impetus to the new fields of
epidemiology and biomedicine, and most immediately allowed the
resumption and completion of work on the Panama Canal (1904â€"1914) by
the United States. Reed followed work started by Carlos Finlay and
directed by George Miller Sternberg, who has been called the "first
U.S. bacteriologist".Walter Reed was born in Belroi, Virginia, to
Lemuel Sutton Reed (a traveling Methodist minister) and his first
wife, Pharaba White. During his youth, the family resided at
Murfreesboro, North Carolina with his mother's family during his
father's preaching tours. Two of his elder brothers later achieved
distinction: J.C. became a minister in Virginia like their father, and
Christopher a judge in Wichita, Kansas and later St. Louis, Missouri,
Their childhood home is included in the Murfreesboro Historic
District.After the American Civil War, Rev. Reed remarried, to Mrs.
Mary C. Byrd Kyle of Harrisonburg, Virginia, with whom he would have a
daughter. Young Walter enrolled at the University of Virginia. After
two years, Reed completed the M.D. degree in 1869, two months before
he turned 18. He was the youngest-ever recipient of an M.D. from the
university.Reed then enrolled at the New York University's Bellevue
Hospital Medical College in Manhattan, New York, where he obtained a
second M.D. in 1870, as his brother Christopher attempted to set up a
legal practice. After interning at several New York City hospitals,
Walter Reed worked for the New York Board of Health until 1875. Walter Reed Biography, NetWorth, Height, Age, Weight, Family, Married, Son, Daughter