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Copy of Copy of Yellow Death 3 (Honors) (6/23/2025)

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14 questions
What Makes a Monster Monstrous?
1

Look at the monster matrix and think of a scary monster (from a movie, a book, a video game, etc.). What made that monster scary?

Excerpt from Chapter 1 in The Secret of the Yellow Death by Suzanne Jurmain

1 Summer 1899

2 The young man didn’t feel well. First, there was the chill: an icy, bone-freezing chill in the middle of a warm summer evening. Then there was the terrible crushing headache. His back hurt. His stomach twisted with pain. And then he was hot, boiling hot, with a fever that hovered around 104 degrees. His skin turned yellow. The whites of his eyes looked like lemons. Nauseated, he gagged and threw up again and again, spewing streams of vomit black with digested clots of blood across the pillow. Sometimes he cried out or babbled in delirium. Violent spasms jolted his body. It took two grown men to hold him in his bed as a nurse wiped away the drops of blood that trickled from his nose and mouth. Nights and mornings passed. Then, five days after that first freezing chill, the young man died: another victim of a terrible disease called yellow fever.

3 Doctors didn’t know what caused it. They couldn’t cure it. But they knew that yellow fever was a killer. For centuries the disease had swept through parts of the Americas and Africa, leaving behind a trail of loss and misery. It turned cities into ghost towns and left the local graveyards filled with corpses. In New Orleans, Dr. Kennedy took sick and collapsed while he was tending patients. In Philadelphia, Dr. Hodge’s little girl caught the fever, turned yellow, and died in two short days. And when the sickness killed the Memphis snack shop woman Kate Bionda, she left behind her husband and two small children. The fever struck the rich. It struck the poor. It killed the humble, and it humbled the important. Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America during the U.S. Civil War, lost his son to yellow fever. George Clymer, who’d signed the Declaration of Independence, watched helplessly as the sickness struck his wife and family. And every single year the illness took its toll. In 1793, 4,044 people in Philadelphia died during a plague of yellow fever. New Orleans counted 8,101 yellow fever deaths in 1853. And when the disease hit Memphis, Tennessee, in 1878, 17,000 citizens sickened in a single month. Stores closed. Work stopped. Thousands fled, and those who remained wandered through a nightmare city—where sick children huddled next to dying parents and hungry dogs roamed the silent streets searching for their lost dead masters.

4 “Yellow fever [is] . . . an enemy which imperils life and cripples commerce and industry,” Surgeon General John Woodworth told the U.S. Congress in 1879. And he was right. In one single century—between 1800 and 1900—the disease sickened approximately 500,000 U.S. citizens and killed about 100,000.

5 The question was, what could be done about it?

6 By the 1890s doctors had found that many illnesses are caused by one-celled microscopic organisms called bacteria. With the help of this new knowledge, they taught the public how to kill these dangerous bacterial “germs” with things like heat and disinfectant. They also learned how to use dead or weakened germs to make vaccines—special types of medicine that prevent illness by forcing a living body to produce its own disease-fighting substances. Slowly, physicians began to conquer deadly sicknesses like cholera, typhoid, anthrax, and diphtheria. But yellow fever still raged. Researchers studied the disease. Doctors argued about the cause. Scientists peered through their microscopes, looking for the yellow fever germ. But there was no progress. Each year the hot summer weather brought on yellow fever epidemics. Each year desperate people burned clothing, bedding, and even buildings that had housed yellow fever victims in hopes of stopping the disease. Frantic doctors bled the sick, stuck them in mustard baths, dosed them with opium, or gave them drugs that might make them vomit out the germ—but nothing helped. Each year thousands of people caught the disease. Thousands died of it. And then, suddenly, something happened—something that at first didn’t seem to have anything to do with yellow fever or with medical science.

7 On February 9, 1898, the U.S. battleship Maine blew up in the harbor of Havana, Cuba. Two hundred and sixty-eight American servicemen were killed. U.S. officials told a shocked nation that Spanish government agents had deliberately caused the explosion. And by the end of April the United States had decided to go to war with Spain.

8 In the next four months American soldiers beat the Spanish army in Cuba. They beat the Spanish navy in the Pacific. And when the Spanish-American War ended in July, the victorious U.S. forces had won the right to govern Cuba and Puerto Rico (two islands off the southern coast of Florida), as well as the Pacific Ocean islands of Guam and the Philippines. Unfortunately, the war had also brought the United States face-to-face with another deadly enemy: yellow fever.

9 Because of the disease, the newly conquered Cuban territory was a deathtrap. Yellow fever epidemics swept the country. Visitors often contracted the illness soon after landing on the island’s shores. Some U.S. troops had already died of the disease in Cuba, and Washington officials were alarmed.

10 What would happen to American soldiers in Cuba if a full-scale epidemic broke out on the island? Or, worse, what would happen if homecoming U.S. troops carried yellow fever back to North America? That was the kind of thinking that gave United States officials nightmares.

11 Something had to be done.

12 Somehow the country had to find a way to prevent more attacks of yellow fever.

13 But before U.S. scientists could stop or cure the disease, they had to understand it. They had to know what caused the sickness. They had to know what spread it. And it was important that they find out soon.

14 On May 24, 1900, the U.S. government sent orders to four American army doctors. Their mission was to go to Cuba and find the cause of yellow fever.
1
“His skin turned yellow. The whites of his eyes looked like lemons. Nauseated, he gagged and threw up again and again, spewing streams of vomit black with digested blood across the pillow.” (1, 2)

This detail depicts yellow fever as __________
1
“For centuries the disease had swept through parts of the Americas and Africa, leaving behind a trail of loss and misery.” (1, 3)

This detail depicts yellow fever as __________
1
“And every single year the illness took its toll. In 1793, 4,044 people in Philadelphia died during a plague of yellow fever. New Orleans counted 8,101 yellow fever deaths in 1853, And when the disease hit Memphis, Tennessee, in 1878, 17,000 citizens sickened in a single month.” (1, 3)

This detail depicts yellow fever as__________
1

Which of these sentences from the description of the disease compares yellow fever to something dangerous?

What Makes a Hero Heroic?
Excerpt from Chapter 1 in The Secret of the Yellow Death by Suzanne Jurmain

1 Summer 1899

2 The young man didn’t feel well. First, there was the chill: an icy, bone-freezing chill in the middle of a warm summer evening. Then there was the terrible crushing headache. His back hurt. His stomach twisted with pain. And then he was hot, boiling hot, with a fever that hovered around 104 degrees. His skin turned yellow. The whites of his eyes looked like lemons. Nauseated, he gagged and threw up again and again, spewing streams of vomit black with digested clots of blood across the pillow. Sometimes he cried out or babbled in delirium. Violent spasms jolted his body. It took two grown men to hold him in his bed as a nurse wiped away the drops of blood that trickled from his nose and mouth. Nights and mornings passed. Then, five days after that first freezing chill, the young man died: another victim of a terrible disease called yellow fever.

3 Doctors didn’t know what caused it. They couldn’t cure it. But they knew that yellow fever was a killer. For centuries the disease had swept through parts of the Americas and Africa, leaving behind a trail of loss and misery. It turned cities into ghost towns and left the local graveyards filled with corpses. In New Orleans, Dr. Kennedy took sick and collapsed while he was tending patients. In Philadelphia, Dr. Hodge’s little girl caught the fever, turned yellow, and died in two short days. And when the sickness killed the Memphis snack shop woman Kate Bionda, she left behind her husband and two small children. The fever struck the rich. It struck the poor. It killed the humble, and it humbled the important. Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America during the U.S. Civil War, lost his son to yellow fever. George Clymer, who’d signed the Declaration of Independence, watched helplessly as the sickness struck his wife and family. And every single year the illness took its toll. In 1793, 4,044 people in Philadelphia died during a plague of yellow fever. New Orleans counted 8,101 yellow fever deaths in 1853. And when the disease hit Memphis, Tennessee, in 1878, 17,000 citizens sickened in a single month. Stores closed. Work stopped. Thousands fled, and those who remained wandered through a nightmare city—where sick children huddled next to dying parents and hungry dogs roamed the silent streets searching for their lost dead masters.

4 “Yellow fever [is] . . . an enemy which imperils life and cripples commerce and industry,” Surgeon General John Woodworth told the U.S. Congress in 1879. And he was right. In one single century—between 1800 and 1900—the disease sickened approximately 500,000 U.S. citizens and killed about 100,000.

5 The question was, what could be done about it?

6 By the 1890s doctors had found that many illnesses are caused by one-celled microscopic organisms called bacteria. With the help of this new knowledge, they taught the public how to kill these dangerous bacterial “germs” with things like heat and disinfectant. They also learned how to use dead or weakened germs to make vaccines—special types of medicine that prevent illness by forcing a living body to produce its own disease-fighting substances. Slowly, physicians began to conquer deadly sicknesses like cholera, typhoid, anthrax, and diphtheria. But yellow fever still raged. Researchers studied the disease. Doctors argued about the cause. Scientists peered through their microscopes, looking for the yellow fever germ. But there was no progress. Each year the hot summer weather brought on yellow fever epidemics. Each year desperate people burned clothing, bedding, and even buildings that had housed yellow fever victims in hopes of stopping the disease. Frantic doctors bled the sick, stuck them in mustard baths, dosed them with opium, or gave them drugs that might make them vomit out the germ—but nothing helped. Each year thousands of people caught the disease. Thousands died of it. And then, suddenly, something happened—something that at first didn’t seem to have anything to do with yellow fever or with medical science.

7 On February 9, 1898, the U.S. battleship Maine blew up in the harbor of Havana, Cuba. Two hundred and sixty-eight American servicemen were killed. U.S. officials told a shocked nation that Spanish government agents had deliberately caused the explosion. And by the end of April the United States had decided to go to war with Spain.

8 In the next four months American soldiers beat the Spanish army in Cuba. They beat the Spanish navy in the Pacific. And when the Spanish-American War ended in July, the victorious U.S. forces had won the right to govern Cuba and Puerto Rico (two islands off the southern coast of Florida), as well as the Pacific Ocean islands of Guam and the Philippines. Unfortunately, the war had also brought the United States face-to-face with another deadly enemy: yellow fever.

9 Because of the disease, the newly conquered Cuban territory was a deathtrap. Yellow fever epidemics swept the country. Visitors often contracted the illness soon after landing on the island’s shores. Some U.S. troops had already died of the disease in Cuba, and Washington officials were alarmed.

10 What would happen to American soldiers in Cuba if a full-scale epidemic broke out on the island? Or, worse, what would happen if homecoming U.S. troops carried yellow fever back to North America? That was the kind of thinking that gave United States officials nightmares.

11 Something had to be done.

12 Somehow the country had to find a way to prevent more attacks of yellow fever.

13 But before U.S. scientists could stop or cure the disease, they had to understand it. They had to know what caused the sickness. They had to know what spread it. And it was important that they find out soon.

14 On May 24, 1900, the U.S. government sent orders to four American army doctors. Their mission was to go to Cuba and find the cause of yellow fever.
With a partner, discuss:
  • What qualities does a hero have?
  • What does heroism look like? Act like? Sound like?
  • What does it mean for someone to be “heroic”?
Introducing Dr. Reed
Excerpt from Chapter 2 in The Secret of the Yellow Death by Suzanne Jurmain

1 June 21–24, 1900 2 The USS Sedgwick lurched, and Major Walter Reed, M.D., promptly threw up. The ship was barely out of New York. Already he was seasick. And now, now that he was facing the biggest, most important challenge of his whole career, Dr. Walter Reed didn’t need to waste time leaning over the rail and doing what he called “feeding the fishes.” 3 For roughly twenty years, Reed had dreamed of being able to do something big, something important, something that he hoped would “alleviate human suffering.” It was a dream he’d had when he was a young army doctor tending settlers, soldiers, and Apaches on lonely frontier outposts. It was something he’d thought about when he went back to school at age thirty-nine to study bacteriology—a brand-new branch of medical science that dealt with the disease-causing germs that researchers called bacteria. For ten more years Reed had hoped to make a major contribution while he did research and taught students at the U.S. Army Medical School in Washington, D.C. And now, finally, at age forty-nine, he had a chance to take on the most exciting and important project of his whole career. Just a few weeks earlier, the U.S. Army had ordered Dr. Walter Reed to go to Cuba, head a team of three other doctors, and find the cause of yellow fever. 4 But where was he going to start? Before leaving Washington, Reed had read the latest medical books and done some preliminary experiments. He’d looked at scientific articles on yellow fever, and he’d also talked to people who’d spent time studying the illness. By now he knew that there were several current theories on the cause of the disease, and he could tick off on his fingers the first three items that had to be investigated.
1

What is your first impression of Dr. Reed? What gave you that impression? Reread the excerpt and copy two details the author uses that give you a clear impression of Dr. Reed.

CLASS DISCUSSION (4 CORNERS)

Is Dr. Reed:
- unheroic (back left)
- somewhat unheroic (back right)
- average (center)
- somewhat heroic (front right)
-heroic (front left)

Go to corners and discuss with group what makes Dr. Reed ____. You will then have a spokesperson explain the reasoning. After hearing your classmates reasons, if you would like to change your stance- move now.
Write: Is Dr. Reed a Hero?
Raise your hand if...
  • you were surprised by how many people yellow fever had killed during outbreaks of the disease.
  • you could understand why the United States government thought the mission to investigate the cause of this disease was so important.
  • the first description of Dr. Reed created the impression that he would be a good man for this mission.
  • the first description of Dr. Reed created the impression that he would not be a good man for this mission.
Excerpt from Chapter 2 in The Secret of the Yellow Death by Suzanne Jurmain

1 June 21–24, 1900

2 The USS Sedgwick lurched, and Major Walter Reed, M.D., promptly threw up. The ship was barely out of New York. Already he was seasick. And now, now that he was facing the biggest, most important challenge of his whole career, Dr. Walter Reed didn’t need to waste time leaning over the rail and doing what he called “feeding the fishes.”

3 For roughly twenty years, Reed had dreamed of being able to do something big, something important, something that he hoped would “alleviate human suffering.” It was a dream he’d had when he was a young army doctor tending settlers, soldiers, and Apaches on lonely frontier outposts. It was something he’d thought about when he went back to school at age thirty-nine to study bacteriology—a brand-new branch of medical science that dealt with the disease-causing germs that researchers called bacteria. For ten more years Reed had hoped to make a major contribution while he did research and taught students at the U.S. Army Medical School in Washington, D.C. And now, finally, at age forty-nine, he had a chance to take on the most exciting and important project of his whole career. Just a few weeks earlier, the U.S. Army had ordered Dr. Walter Reed to go to Cuba, head a team of three other doctors, and find the cause of yellow fever.

4 But where was he going to start? Before leaving Washington, Reed had read the latest medical books and done some preliminary experiments. He’d looked at scientific articles on yellow fever, and he’d also talked to people who’d spent time studying the illness. By now he knew that there were several current theories on the cause of the disease, and he could tick off on his fingers the first three items that had to be investigated.
Excerpt from Chapter 1 in The Secret of the Yellow Death by Suzanne Jurmain
1 Summer 1899
2 The young man didn’t feel well. First, there was the chill: an icy, bone-freezing chill in the middle of a warm summer evening. Then there was the terrible crushing headache. His back hurt. His stomach twisted with pain. And then he was hot, boiling hot, with a fever that hovered around 104 degrees. His skin turned yellow. The whites of his eyes looked like lemons. Nauseated, he gagged and threw up again and again, spewing streams of vomit black with digested clots of blood across the pillow. Sometimes he cried out or babbled in delirium. Violent spasms jolted his body. It took two grown men to hold him in his bed as a nurse wiped away the drops of blood that trickled from his nose and mouth. Nights and mornings passed. Then, five days after that first freezing chill, the young man died: another victim of a terrible disease called yellow fever.
3 Doctors didn’t know what caused it. They couldn’t cure it. But they knew that yellow fever was a killer. For centuries the disease had swept through parts of the Americas and Africa, leaving behind a trail of loss and misery. It turned cities into ghost towns and left the local graveyards filled with corpses. In New Orleans, Dr. Kennedy took sick and collapsed while he was tending patients. In Philadelphia, Dr. Hodge’s little girl caught the fever, turned yellow, and died in two short days. And when the sickness killed the Memphis snack shop woman Kate Bionda, she left behind her husband and two small children. The fever struck the rich. It struck the poor. It killed the humble, and it humbled the important. Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America during the U.S. Civil War, lost his son to yellow fever. George Clymer, who’d signed the Declaration of Independence, watched helplessly as the sickness struck his wife and family. And every single year the illness took its toll. In 1793, 4,044 people in Philadelphia died during a plague of yellow fever. New Orleans counted 8,101 yellow fever deaths in 1853. And when the disease hit Memphis, Tennessee, in 1878, 17,000 citizens sickened in a single month. Stores closed. Work stopped. Thousands fled, and those who remained wandered through a nightmare city—where sick children huddled next to dying parents and hungry dogs roamed the silent streets searching for their lost dead masters.
4 “Yellow fever [is] . . . an enemy which imperils life and cripples commerce and industry,” Surgeon General John Woodworth told the U.S. Congress in 1879. And he was right. In one single century—between 1800 and 1900—the disease sickened approximately 500,000 U.S. citizens and killed about 100,000.
5 The question was, what could be done about it?
6 By the 1890s doctors had found that many illnesses are caused by one-celled microscopic organisms called bacteria. With the help of this new knowledge, they taught the public how to kill these dangerous bacterial “germs” with things like heat and disinfectant. They also learned how to use dead or weakened germs to make vaccines—special types of medicine that prevent illness by forcing a living body to produce its own disease-fighting substances. Slowly, physicians began to conquer deadly sicknesses like cholera, typhoid, anthrax, and diphtheria. But yellow fever still raged. Researchers studied the disease. Doctors argued about the cause. Scientists peered through their microscopes, looking for the yellow fever germ. But there was no progress. Each year the hot summer weather brought on yellow fever epidemics. Each year desperate people burned clothing, bedding, and even buildings that had housed yellow fever victims in hopes of stopping the disease. Frantic doctors bled the sick, stuck them in mustard baths, dosed them with opium, or gave them drugs that might make them vomit out the germ—but nothing helped. Each year thousands of people caught the disease. Thousands died of it. And then, suddenly, something happened—something that at first didn’t seem to have anything to do with yellow fever or with medical science.
7 On February 9, 1898, the U.S. battleship Maine blew up in the harbor of Havana, Cuba. Two hundred and sixty-eight American servicemen were killed. U.S. officials told a shocked nation that Spanish government agents had deliberately caused the explosion. And by the end of April the United States had decided to go to war with Spain.
8 In the next four months American soldiers beat the Spanish army in Cuba. They beat the Spanish navy in the Pacific. And when the Spanish-American War ended in July, the victorious U.S. forces had won the right to govern Cuba and Puerto Rico (two islands off the southern coast of Florida), as well as the Pacific Ocean islands of Guam and the Philippines. Unfortunately, the war had also brought the United States face-to-face with another deadly enemy: yellow fever.
9 Because of the disease, the newly conquered Cuban territory was a deathtrap. Yellow fever epidemics swept the country. Visitors often contracted the illness soon after landing on the island’s shores. Some U.S. troops had already died of the disease in Cuba, and Washington officials were alarmed.
10 What would happen to American soldiers in Cuba if a full-scale epidemic broke out on the island? Or, worse, what would happen if homecoming U.S. troops carried yellow fever back to North America? That was the kind of thinking that gave United States officials nightmares.
11 Something had to be done.
12 Somehow the country had to find a way to prevent more attacks of yellow fever.
13 But before U.S. scientists could stop or cure the disease, they had to understand it. They had to know what caused the sickness. They had to know what spread it. And it was important that they find out soon.
14 On May 24, 1900, the U.S. government sent orders to four American army doctors. Their mission was to go to Cuba and find the cause of yellow fever.
Write for at least 12 minutes, producing at least 100 words. Use your APE method (Answer, Prove, Explain). Quotes from the text go into word count.
1

How does the author introduce and describe Dr. Walter Reed? Does he seem like a hero who is ready to defeat the “monster,“ yellow fever? Use two details to support your position.

Homework
2
Read the details below and select the ones that portray Dr. Reed as heroic. ______________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________
Other Answer Choices:
Dr. Reed taught medical students in Washington, D.C.
Dr. Reed had tended to settlers, soldiers, and Apaches as an army doctor.
Dr. Reed hope [to] alleviate human suffering.
Dr. Reed was seasick.
Excerpt from Chapter 2 in The Secret of the Yellow Death by Suzanne Jurmain

1 June 21–24, 1900

2 The USS Sedgwick lurched, and Major Walter Reed, M.D., promptly threw up. The ship was barely out of New York. Already he was seasick. And now, now that he was facing the biggest, most important challenge of his whole career, Dr. Walter Reed didn’t need to waste time leaning over the rail and doing what he called “feeding the fishes.”

3 For roughly twenty years, Reed had dreamed of being able to do something big, something important, something that he hoped would “alleviate human suffering.” It was a dream he’d had when he was a young army doctor tending settlers, soldiers, and Apaches on lonely frontier outposts. It was something he’d thought about when he went back to school at age thirty-nine to study bacteriology—a brand-new branch of medical science that dealt with the disease-causing germs that researchers called bacteria. For ten more years Reed had hoped to make a major contribution while he did research and taught students at the U.S. Army Medical School in Washington, D.C. And now, finally, at age forty-nine, he had a chance to take on the most exciting and important project of his whole career. Just a few weeks earlier, the U.S. Army had ordered Dr. Walter Reed to go to Cuba, head a team of three other doctors, and find the cause of yellow fever.

4 But where was he going to start? Before leaving Washington, Reed had read the latest medical books and done some preliminary experiments. He’d looked at scientific articles on yellow fever, and he’d also talked to people who’d spent time studying the illness. By now he knew that there were several current theories on the cause of the disease, and he could tick off on his fingers the first three items that had to be investigated.

5 First was an idea suggested by Dr Giuseppe Sanarelli. A few years earlier this Italian researcher had announced that a type of bacteria called Bacillus icteroides was the cause of yellow fever. That sounded good. But Reed’s recent experiments had shown that Bacillus icteroides actually caused a pig disease called hog cholera. Now scientists were arguing about which research results were right, and Walter Reed knew that his team would have to find a way of settling the issue. That was a big project, and it was only the beginning. 6 Next on the list was an old theory—one that had been around for years. It claimed that healthy people got the disease by touching clothing, bedding, or furniture that had been used by yellow fever patients. That idea was so popular that it had appeared in medical books. Many health authorities believed it. So did many doctors. Of course, no scientist had ever proved the theory to be true. But it was definitely a matter for Reed and his assistants to consider.

7 And then, finally, there was another idea. A very different one. For almost twenty years, in more than one hundred experiments, a Cuban doctor named Carlos Finlay had tried to prove that mosquito bites caused yellow fever. Time and time again, the Cuban scientist had attempted to show that bugs could carry the disease by letting mosquitoes he thought might be infected with the germ bite groups of healthy patients. But none of Finlay’s patients ever developed a truly clear-cut case of yellow fever from the bites. The experiments were unsuccessful. Many scientists laughed at the Cuban doctor’s failures. The mosquito theory didn’t seem to fit the facts, and no one understood why Finlay still continued to believe it. Maybe, some people said, the Cuban doctor was “touched.” Others came right out and called him “crazy.” Even Reed’s boss, the surgeon general of the army, George Sternberg—a leading American bacteriologist—thought that the mosquito theory was a joke. Investigating it was useless,” he told Reed. And there was a good chance that the army surgeon general was right. Most sensible scientists did think the mosquito theory sounded pretty flaky. And Bacillus icteroides? Well, because of his own research, Reed privately thought that was probably pretty flaky, too. 8 But, of course, what Reed thought didn’t matter. Science wasn’t about opinions or theories. It was about facts. And Reed’s job was clear. With the help of his team, he had to find the facts. He had to test each one of the theories. 9 He had to find out—once and for all—if any of them was right. And if all three current theories were wrong, Reed would have to come up with a new idea—and test that. It was a big job. A tough one. But if Reed and his team could do it . . . if somehow they could find the cause of yellow fever, it might help scientists prevent the disease—or cure it. 10 But that was all in the future.

11 At the moment, the only cure Reed really needed was a remedy for seasickness. In a letter to his wife and daughter, he said that there seemed to be “two or three tons of brick in . . . [his] stomach.” 12 And when the USS Sedgwick rolled again, Dr. Walter Reed leaned over, threw up, and “fed the fishes.”
Carlos Finlay, the Cuban doctor who tried to prove that mosquito bites caused yellow fever
1
The USS Sedgwick is a __________
4

Put Dr. Reed’s accomplishments in order so that the most recent event is at the top.

  1. Went back to school to study bacteriology
  2. Taught medical students at the U.S. Army Medical School
  3. Worked as a young army doctor tending settlers, soldiers, and Apaches
  4. Left New Yeet for Cuba on the USS Sedgwick
1

Choose the sentence that best sums up Dr. Reed’s mission.

For roughly twenty years, Reed had dreamed of being able to do something big, something important, something that he hoped would “alleviate human suffering.” It was a dream he’d had when he was a young army doctor tending settlers, soldiers, and Apaches on lonely frontier outposts. It was something he’d thought about when he went back to school at age thirty-nine to study bacteriology—a brand-new branch of medical science that dealt with the disease-causing germs that researchers called bacteria. For ten more years Reed had hoped to make a major contribution while he did research and taught students at the U.S. Army Medical School in Washington, D.C. And now, finally, at age forty-nine, he had a chance to take on the most exciting and important project of his whole career. Just a few weeks earlier, the U.S. Army had ordered Dr. Walter Reed to go to Cuba, head a team of three other doctors, and find the cause of yellow fever.
1

Which of the following is not mentioned as a possible cause of yellow fever?

1

What motivates Dr. Reed to embark on this journey? A sense of duty? Scientific curiosity? Ambition to make a difference in the world? Use evidence from the text to support your answer.

Challenge Writing
Excerpt from Chapter 2 in The Secret of the Yellow Death by Suzanne Jurmain

1 June 21–24, 1900

2 The USS Sedgwick lurched, and Major Walter Reed, M.D., promptly threw up. The ship was barely out of New York. Already he was seasick. And now, now that he was facing the biggest, most important challenge of his whole career, Dr. Walter Reed didn’t need to waste time leaning over the rail and doing what he called “feeding the fishes.”

3 For roughly twenty years, Reed had dreamed of being able to do something big, something important, something that he hoped would “alleviate human suffering.” It was a dream he’d had when he was a young army doctor tending settlers, soldiers, and Apaches on lonely frontier outposts. It was something he’d thought about when he went back to school at age thirty-nine to study bacteriology—a brand-new branch of medical science that dealt with the disease-causing germs that researchers called bacteria. For ten more years Reed had hoped to make a major contribution while he did research and taught students at the U.S. Army Medical School in Washington, D.C. And now, finally, at age forty-nine, he had a chance to take on the most exciting and important project of his whole career. Just a few weeks earlier, the U.S. Army had ordered Dr. Walter Reed to go to Cuba, head a team of three other doctors, and find the cause of yellow fever.

4 But where was he going to start? Before leaving Washington, Reed had read the latest medical books and done some preliminary experiments. He’d looked at scientific articles on yellow fever, and he’d also talked to people who’d spent time studying the illness. By now he knew that there were several current theories on the cause of the disease, and he could tick off on his fingers the first three items that had to be investigated.

"See It Through" by Edgar Guest

When you’re up against a trouble, Meet it squarely, face to face; Lift your chin and set your shoulders, Plant your feet and take a brace. When it’s vain to try to dodge it, Do the best that you can do; You may fail, but you may conquer, See it through! Black may be the clouds about you And your future may seem grim, But don’t let your nerve desert you; Keep yourself in fighting trim. If the worst is bound to happen, Spite of all that you can do, Running from it will not save you, See it through! Even hope may seem but futile, When with troubles you’re beset, But remember you are facing Just what other men have met. You may fail, but fall still fighting; Don’t give up, whate’er you do; Eyes front, head high to the finish. See it through!
1

Choose one of the following prompts. Your answer should be 100-300 words in length. Use your APE method.

Writing Prompt 1 (Informative): What character trait does the speaker of the poem “See It Through” want his listener to develop? Use evidence from the poem to support your answer.

Writing Prompt 2 (Argumentative): Do you think Dr. Walter Reed is prepared to see through “the biggest, most important challenge of his whole career” (2)? Use evidence from the poem “See It Through” and The Secret of the Yellow Death to support your argument.