Jesse William Lazear PhD (1866 - 1900)

Born 2 May 1866 in Baltimore, Maryland, United States

Ancestors

Died 25 Sep 1900 at age 34 in Quemados, Cuba

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Biography

Jesse is the son of William and Charlotte (Pettigrew) Lazear. He attended Trinity Hall Military Academy and Washington & Jefferson College, both in Washington, Pennsylvania, and obtained his Bachelor of Arts in 1889 from Johns Hopkins University and his PhD in Medicine in 1892 from the Medical School at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He did his specialization in Paris at the Institut Pasteur.

"After receiving his MD from Columbia, Jesse William Lazear (AB 1889) went on to teach at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine."^[1]

In 1896 he married Mabel Houston. They had two children:

• William Houston
• Margaret, m. Walter Briggs

In 1900 he reported for duty as the assistant surgeon at Columbia Barracks (Quemados, Cuba) for the United States Army. After a few months in Quemados, Lazear, together with Walter Reed, James Carroll (1854–1907) and Aristides Agramonte (1869–1931), participated in a commission studying the transmission of yellow fever, the Yellow Fever Board. During his research at Camp Colombia, he confirmed the 1881 hypothesis of Carlos Finlay that mosquitoes transmitted this disease. Lazear was the only member of the commission who had experience working with mosquitoes, and he used mosquito larvae from Finlay's laboratory. He wrote to his wife in a letter dated September 8, 1900, "I rather think I am on the track of the real germ."^[2] Lazear deliberately allowed an infected mosquito to bite him in order to study the disease. He contracted the disease and died at age 34, just seventeen days after writing his letter.

"Lazear was widely hailed as a martyr to science."^[1]

Sources

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1} "A Brief History of the Homewood Campus, its Buildings, Monuments and Sculptures," Johns Hopkins University, Ferdinand Hamburger Archives, Sheridan Libraries, 1991 (revised 2010, 2020) PDF vie jhu.edu
2. ↑ U.S. Army Yellow Fever Commission

• "Jesse's Wikipedia Page"
• United States General Index to Pension Files, 1861-1934
• Find A Grave Memorial # 65679179