Reed, Walter

1851 – He was born this year and raised in Belroi, an unincorporated community in Gloucester County in eastern Virginia's Middle Peninsula region, to Lemuel Sutton Reed (a Methodist minister) and Pharaba White.

1869 – At the age of 18, he completed the M.D. degree after two year-long sessions at the University of Virginia.

1870 – He then enrolled at the New York University's Bellevue Hospital Medical College in Manhattan, New York, where he obtained his second M.D.

1875 - After interning at several New York City hospitals, he served the New York Board of Health until this year.
 

1893 – He joined the US Army Medical Corps, both for its professional opportunities and the modest financial security it could provide. He spent much of his Army career until this year at difficult postings in the American West.

1900 – In May of this year, a major, returned to Cuba when he was appointed head of the Army board charged by Surgeon General George Miller Sternberg to examine tropical diseases including yellow fever.

1901 – Following his returned from Cuba, he continued to speak and publish on yellow fever. He received honorary degrees from Harvard and the University of Michigan in recognition of his seminal work.

 
1902 – His appendix ruptured; he died on the 23rd of November this year, of the resulting peritonitis, at age 51. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.