616 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1921. 



he entered Bellevue Hospital Medical College, graduating in 1879. 

 He served as interne, 1878-1880, and was commissioned as a first 

 lieutenant and assistant surgeon in the Army, June 16, 1880. His 

 first assignment to duty was at Fort Clark, Tex. In the fall of 1882 

 he was ordered to Fort Brown, Tex. Here he had his first profes- 

 sional experience with yellow fever, then epidemic on the Mexican 

 border. This experience with this scourge so early in his career 

 largely influenced his future. The mystery of its spread and its 

 deadly nature appealed to his imagination, and he lost no oppor- 

 tunity to study this disease, and such opportunities were not in- 

 frequent for those who served at any of the stations located in the 

 Gulf States, where yellow fever was from time to time epidemic. 

 His cases were always carefully observed. Methods of treatment, 

 hypotheses regarding the transmission of infection from man to 

 man, and the various methods proposed for the control of epidemics, 

 were studied and tested. All that he learned, or a supposition dis- 

 proved, was a stimulus for greater effort. Further observation was 

 temporarily interrupted in the fall of 1884 by reason of his transfer 

 from Fort Brown to Fort Randall, Dak. 



On June 16, 1885, he was promoted to the grade of captain and 

 assistant surgeon. On Sept. 15, 1885, he married Miss Marie Cook 

 Doughty of Cincinnati. Opportunity to resume the study of yellow 

 fever came with his transfer to Fort Barrancas, Fla., where he 

 served, with the exception of an 18-month tour of duty at Fort Reno, 

 until the war with Spain. Shortly after the outbreak of the Span- 

 ish-American War he was appointed major and brigade surgeon. 

 A vacancy in the regular service permitted of his promotion July 

 6, 1918, to the grade of major and surgeon in the regular establish- 

 ment. 



General Gorgas went to Siboney on the hospital ship Relief, and 

 was present during the entire Santiago campaign. He established 

 and was in command of the yellow-fever hospital at this place. He 

 was invalided to the States after the occupation of Santiago, because 

 of a severe malarial infection. After convalescence, he returned to 

 Cuba, and was made health officer of Havana. 



Here 3'ellow fever was epidemic as it had been almost continuously 

 since 1620. Havana was cleaned, one might say scrubbed and dis- 

 infected, but yellow fever remained. Case after case was found. No 

 method tried served to lessen the incidence of the disease. The Reed 

 Board was investigating theories advanced regarding the etiology 

 of that disease. Their work was notable in proving that none of 

 the etiological factors claimed by their sponsors was the true cause 

 of the disease. The claim put forward by Dr. Carlos Finlay in 1881, 

 that the Stegomyia fasciata was the agent by which the yellow-fever 

 virus was transmitted from man to man alone remained. On Febru- 



