620, 



NATURE 



fJULY 15, 1920 



Obi tuary. 



Major-Gen. William Crawford Gorgas, 

 K.C.M.G. 

 T N St. Paul's Cathedral on July 9 a very rernark- 

 A able tribute was paid to one who may fittingly 

 be termed a Napoleon of Hygiene. On that day 

 a military funeral was accorded to the remains 

 of Major-Gen, William Crawford Gorgas, 

 Surgeon-General of the United States Army and 

 president of the American Medical Association. 

 The impressive service was attended by a large 

 concourse, including the Director-General of the 

 Army Medical Department, who represented the 

 King, the Director-General of the Medical Depart- 

 ment of the Navy, the Presidents of the Royal 

 Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons, the Presi- 

 dents of the Royal Society of Medicine and the 

 Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 

 and representatives of other learned societies and 

 scientific institutions. Had the late Gen. Gorgas 

 been a British subject such a tribute to his life and 

 work would have been sufficiently noteworthy, but 

 that a citizen and soldier of the United States 

 should be honoured by these funeral rites is a 

 unique testimony, not only to the man who fought 

 and conquered yellow fever, but also to preventive 

 medicine generally. 



It is right that it should be so, and to no one 

 could such an honour be more fittingly paid than to 

 the man who devoted himself heart and soul to 

 making the tropics healthy and habitable and, 

 above all others, translated the pioneer scientific 

 work of Laveran, Manson, Ross, Grassi, Finlay, 

 and others into action. 



Gorgas 's life, one of ceaseless activity in the 

 cause of science and humanity, began on Oc- 

 tober 3, 1854, when he was born at Mobile, Ala- 

 bama, and terminated in the Queen Alexandra 

 Military Hospital, London, on July 3. Death over- 

 took him on his way to a new field of work, for 

 he was taken seriously ill in England when en 

 route to the West Coast of Africa with the view of 

 studying the yellow fever problem there, a problem 

 by no means solved and differing in some respects 

 from that which presented itself in the New 

 World. 



Gorgas was a son of the South, his father being 

 Gen. Josiah Gorgas, of the Confederate States 

 Army, and his mother a member of a Southern 

 family. He received his medical training at the 

 Southern University, Tennessee, where he gradu- 

 ated A.B., and in 1879 he qualified M.D. at the 

 Bellevue Hospital Medical College of New York 

 University, thereafter holding a house appointment 

 in the hospital. 



In 1880 Gorgas joined the United States Army 



as a surgeon and served in various parts of the 



country, first coming into contact with yellow fever 



in Western Texas and himself suffering from an 



NO. 2646, VOL. 105] 



attack of the disease. His promotion in the service 

 was rapid, and, his bent being towards the preven- 

 tive side of medicine, the year 1898 saw him 

 appointed Chief Sanitary Officer of Havana. At 

 that time Havana was a hot-bed of yellow fever, 

 and Surgeon-Major Gorgas found plenty of scope 

 for his energies. While his colleagues Reed, 

 Carroll, Agramonte, and Lazear established the 

 rdle of Stegomyia fasciata as the vector of the then 

 unknown parasite of yellow fever, Gorgas, as soon 

 as he was certain of the facts, embarked whole- 

 heartedly on an anti-mosquito campaign which in 

 a remarkably short space of time freed Havana 

 from the scourge of "Yellow Jack." It was then 

 that he first displayed to the full those qualities of 

 drive, tact, tenacity, firmness, and resolution which 

 eventually gained for him the proud titles of " a 

 Master-Administrator of tropical hygiene " and 

 of "a Hercules of modern hygiene." 



Gorgas had a wonderful way of getting at the 

 heart of things. He was essentially practical, and 

 this practicality, combined with enthusiasm and a 

 devotion alrriost religious in character, found a 

 still greater field in Panama. He was rewarded 

 for his labours at Havana by being promoted 

 Colonel and Assistant Surgeon-General in the 

 United States Army, and it was in 1904 that he 

 was sent to the famous isthmus to report upon the 

 sanitary condition of the Canal Zone and to be- 

 come ere long Chief Health Officer of an area 

 which for centuries had been notorious for its un- 

 healthiness, a region devastated by malaria and 

 yellow fever and a veritable forcing-house for 

 tropical pathology. 



At first Gorgas had many difficulties. He was 

 up against the Canal Commissioners ; he was at 

 loggerheads with the engineers ; he found himself 

 hampered by red-tape and restrictions of all kinds. 

 Fortunately, the reins of power were at that time 

 held in the United States by a man of very similar 

 calibre to himself, and Theodore Roosevelt, real- 

 ising all that depended on Gorgas 's w^ork, and 

 having every sympathy with him and none for 

 hide-bound traditions, swept away the obstacles 

 from his path, and gave him a free hand and full 

 responsibility. This was all Gorgas wanted. He 

 knew, thanks to the work of Manson, Ross, and 

 Finlay in the first place, and to the labours and 

 sacrifices of his colleagues at Havana in the 

 second, th^t he was on sure ground, and, backed 

 loyally by the governor of the Canal Zone, Judge 

 Magoon, he embarked with a worthy band of 

 helpers and abundant sinews of war upon a cam- 

 paign which speedily routed the forces of disease 

 and death, rendered the Canal Zone not only habit- 

 able, but also healthy, and which will stand for all 

 time as a monument to what can be done when 

 science and administrative hygiene are given 

 ample powers. 



