Background
Jesse William Lazear was born in Baltimore County, Maryland. He was the son of William Lyons Lazear and Charlotte Pettigrew.
Jesse William Lazear was born in Baltimore County, Maryland. He was the son of William Lyons Lazear and Charlotte Pettigrew.
After preliminary studies at Trinity Hall, a private school in Pennsylvania, he entered Johns Hopkins University, from which he was graduated with the degree of A. B. in 1889. Following three years at Columbia College, New York City, he received the degree of M. D. in 1892. Later he had two years of interneship in Bellevue Hospital and a year of European study.
Lazear settled for practice in Baltimore in 1895. While in Europe he had spent some time in the Pasteur Institute in Paris and had become especially interested in bacteriology. He was appointed to the medical staff of Johns Hopkins Hospital, while he was also assistant in clinical microscopy at the university and in the laryngological department of the hospital clinic. He displayed brilliant promise in research work.
In February 1900 he was appointed acting assistant surgeon in the army and was assigned to laboratory duty at Columbia Barracks at Quemados near Havana, Cuba. When, later in the year, the Yellow Fever Commission was organized, he was made a member together with Maj. Walter Reed and Doctors James Carroll and Aristides Agramonte. From the time of his arrival in Cuba, he had devoted much attention to the pathology and bacteriology of yellow fever. He was able to say with confidence to the commission that research along these lines offered little promise. With the decision to investigate the possible transmission of the disease by mosquitoes, Lazear was made responsible for the care and handling of the insects, including their application to fever patients and volunteers for experimentation.
He and Carroll, together with some others, allowed supposedly infected mosquitoes to bite them, but without results. Carroll later succeeded in infecting himself and suffered a sharp attack of the disease. In September, while Lazear was engaged in placing mosquitoes upon patients in a fever ward, a free mosquito alighted upon his hand and, though seen, was allowed to take its feed of blood. Five days later he was taken ill and was removed to the yellow fever hospital at Quemados, where he died September 25, after seven days' illness. His body was returned to Baltimore and lies in Loudon Park Cemetery. A memorial tablet to his memory has been placed in Johns Hopkins Hospital.
Carroll's illness and Lazear's death went far to convince the commission that they were on the right path. Their subsequent work was convincing to the world. Though Lazear's name appears on but one of the published works of the commission, Major Reed insisted that Lazear should have equal honor for whatever credit was accorded the work of the Yellow Fever Commission. In the latter's untimely death, medical research lost a man of unusual promise. With an education and mental equipment far above the average, he well might have made a high place in American medicine.
Lazear was credited with being the first in the United States to isolate the diplococcus of Neisser from the circulating blood. He was among the first to make a study of the structure of the malarial parasite. During his research at Camp Colombia, he confirmed the 1881 hypothesis of Carlos Finlay that mosquitoes transmitted the yellow fever.
Lazear was admired by his colleagues of Johns Hopkins Hospital for his keen perception and patient industry in research, and for his simple high-minded character and likable personality. He was, however, reticent in speech and somewhat diffident in his contact with new acquaintances.
Lazear was married, in 1896, to Mabel Houston of Baltimore, who survived him with two children, one of whom he never saw.
