Borden's Dream

Borden's Dream. Former Walter Reed Army Medical Center. , WRAMC was named for Major Walter Reed, but it was the persistence and vision of another Army doctor, Major William Cline Borden, that led to the construction of the first prominent structures for a U.S. Army general hospital on this site. Borden became friends with Reed when they were on the Army Medical School faculty at the turn of the 20th century. When Borden championed the establishment of a new Army hospital complex, he was serving at two Washington-area installations: the U.S. Army General Hospital (at present-day Fort McNair) as commandant and operating surgeon, and the Army Medical School (on the Mall) as professor of military surgery. Reed had the breakthrough discovery on the transmission of yellow fever, a serious disease affecting Army soldiers abroad at the time., It was in 1902 at the Army General Hospital that Borden operated on Reed, who was suffering from and later died of appendicitis. Deeply affected by his friend's death, Borden dedicated himself to honoring Reed by building a new medical center and naming it for Reed that would combine a new hospital, the Army Medical School and the Army Medical Museum on a single site. After three years of urging Army officials, his efforts paid off in 1905 when Congress passed a bill to authorize the Medical Department of the Army to purchase land and build the icon that would become known around the world simply as "Walter Reed.", Borden oversaw the early planning and construction as the new hospital's first commander, but he was reassigned to the Philippines and was not present for the opening of the hospital in 1909. During World War I, he returned to the hospital briefly as an active duty lieutenant colonel and chief of surgery. He retired in 1919 and was honored as dean emeritus at George Washington University, before his death in 1934.