1919-20.] 
Obituary Notices. 
187 
Surgeon-General W. C. Gorgas. By Major-General 
W. B. Bannerman, M.D., D.Sc. 
(MS. received November 11, 1920. Read November 22, 1920.) 
William Crawford Gorgas was born at Mobile, Alabama, on 3rd 
October 1854. He was son of Joshua Gorgas, a General of Ordnance in 
the Confederate States Army, and his mother was also of Southern stock. 
He was educated at the Southern University, Tennessee, where he graduated 
A.B. 1875. His medical education was taken at Bellevue Hospital Medical 
College, New York, where he graduated M.D. in 1879. After a residentship 
at this college he passed into the U.S. Army in 1880. His first term of 
service was in Western Texas, where he early came in contact with yellow 
fever, and himself suffered from an attack of this disease. He became 
Captain Assistant Surgeon in 1885, Surgeon-Major and Chief Sanitary 
Officer, Havana, in 1898. For his great work in clearing Havana of 
yellow fever he was, by special act of Congress, promoted Colonel and 
Assistant Surgeon-General U.S. Army, and in 1914 he was promoted to 
be Surgeon-General, and was given the rank of Major-General in 1915. 
He conducted the administration of the Surgeon-General’s office in 
Washington during the war, and visited France along with the Secretary 
of War before his retirement under the age rule in 1918. 
He was on his way to the west coast of Africa to study yellow fever 
there when he was stricken down by cerebral haemorrhage in London in 
May last. He was treated in the officers’ wards of the Queen Alexandra 
Military Hospital, Millbank, where he was visited by King George, who 
decorated him with the insignia of K.C.M.G. for his great work in render- 
ing the tropics fit for white men to live in, and there he died in the early 
morning of 4th July 1920. He was accorded a public military funeral at 
St Paul’s on 9th July, which was attended by representatives of the King, 
the Army Medical Department, the Medical Department of the Navy, the 
Presidents of the Royal Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons, the Presidents 
of the Royal Society of Medicine and the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine 
and Hygiene, and representatives of many other learned societies. This is 
probably a unique tribute to one who was not a British subject, but who 
had made himself worthy of it by conquering yellow fever and malaria, 
and showing by practical illustration how the tropics may be made fit for 
a white population to live and work in. 
Gorgas came first into public notice on account of his work in clearing 
Havana of yellow fever after the Spanish- American War. The large 
