Memorandum from Albert E. Truby to the Surgeon General, March 9, 1932

FROM GEN. ALBERT E. TRUBY

9 March, 1932.
MEMORANDUM for The Surgeon General:

    The bases recommended by the Office of The Surgeon General
of the Army and adopted by the Military Affairs Committee of the House,
to be applied to claims for the Yellow Fever Roll of Honor with medal
and pension, given by the Act of February 28, 1929, were as follows:

    That in the Roll of Honor should be included only the
members of the Board and the Americans who volunteered to
submit to be experimented on by the Board in order to decide
certain questions which could only be determined by actual
experiments on human beings. Each of these volunteers had
contributed definitely to the success of the experiments and
exhibited courage and self-devotion by offering himself at
what he believed to be the risk of his life. The list in-
cludes fourteen men who actually suffered attacks of yellow
fever as a result of these experiments, and four men who sub-
mitted to the exceedingly important and disagreeable ordeal
of sleeping twenty nights in the bedding which had been used
by yellow fever patients, and which was soiled with their
discharges. This was, at the time, generally believed to be
more dangerous than the bites of infected mosquitoes.

    The names of individuals who had been bitten by mosquitoes
believed to be infected but who did not suffer an attack of yellow
fever were not included. The reason for this is obvious. In the
first series of experiments which were conducted secretly by the Board,
on account of the rigid military quarantine at Columbia Barracks where
the experiments took place, the names of the individuals were never
given out by the Board, and there is now no way of determining any
of them except the two which were successful. These two were Dr.
James Carroll, a member of the Board, and Private "X.Y." (Private
Wm. H. Dean) whose name was discovered some years afterwards by an
examination of the Sick and Wounded Reports in the Adjutant General's
Office.

    Two reasons are evident why those not infected should not
be placed upon the Yellow Fever Roll of Honor on a parity with men who
actually suffered an attack. First, the theory of the transmission
of yellow fever by the mosquito was then an unproved and discredited
theory, and it is probable that the individuals who offered themselves
for the experiment had little faith in it and believed that the danger
of infection was slight or non-existent. It may be observed that
after the demonstration of the infectivity of mosquitoes by the cases
of Dr. James Carroll and Private X.Y., none of these individuals, so
far as is known, came forward and offered themselves for the second
series of experiments. Therefore, the courage shown by the non-
infected men in the first series was not on a par with that shown by
the men who offered themselves later. Second, a practical difficulty
in extending the roll to include the first series of cases is that
there being no records any individual who was then stationed at the

    I was personally on duty at Camp Columbia at that time, and
understood that Contract Surgeon Alvin S. Pinto, U.S. Army had allowed
himself to be bitten by one of these mosquitoes in possession of Dr.
Lazear but I have no positive knowledge to that effect, and it is
thought that Congress cannot consistently recognize his claim for the
reasons above stated. I have made this statement after conference
with General J. R. Kean and it meets with his concurrence.

A. E. TRUBY
Colonel, M.C., U.S. Army
.