The Glasgow courier. [volume] (Glasgow, Mont.) 1913-current, 1920-07-09

Major General William C. Gorgas
was considered one of the worlds
foremost authorities on military med
icine and surgery. He fought and de-
feated the malarial mosquito in Paua-
ma and thus made possible the build
ing of the great waterway. He dis
lodged yellow fever from it's century,
old stronghold in Havana and under
the direction of the United States gov
eminent and the Rockefeller Founda-
ton supervised campaign against that
dreaded disease in Central America,
Peru and Ecuador.
At the invitation of the British gov
eminent he went to South Africa in
1913 to establish sanitary conditions
in the Rand, as a result of which he
received high honors from the medi-
cal profession in London and Oxford
university conferred a degree upon
him.
In the last ten years his services
were sought to give battle to plaques
in many parts of the world. When
the typhus epidemic began in Serbia
in the war an effort was made to have
him undertake the campaign against
it but at that time he was needed
to direct the medical and surgical
work for the American army in
France.
In the days of the old French COM
pany which attempted to build the
canal tropical diseases annually claim
ed one-fourth of all it's workers. The
French were powerless before this
pestilence.
When General Gorgas became gen.
eral sanitary officer of the Canal COM
mission, the annual death toll had
been reduced but it was still difficult
to obtain the vast army of workmen
necessary and to care for those dis
abled by malaria, yellow fever and
dysentery.
In nine years, by a systematic cam
paign for the destruction of the mos
quito, General Gorgas virtually drove
these diseases from the isthmus. When
he gave up the work to accept the
post of surgeon general in the army
in 1914, deaths among the canal work.
ers had been reduced to S per thous-
and annually. Congress, in recogni-
ton of his achievement, made him a
major general and the world hailed
him as one Of the great men of med
ical science.
His work in combating yellow fever
in Havana began when he went to
Cuba with the rank of major in the
Spanish war. When the war ended
he remained as sanitary officer of the
island. Havana had been for more
than a century the focus of yellow
fever infection for all of the northern
hemisphere. When he left Cuba in
1902 the island had been cleaned up
and Havana, where previously from
200 to 1900 had annually succumbed
to yellow fever, since has been virtu-
ally free from the disease.
While in the canal zone, General
Gorgas visited Guayaqui and mapped
out a plan to rid that city, long known
as the "pesthole of the Pacific" from
the yellow fever scourge and his plan
was in process of execution when the
great val began.
Soon after the United States enter
ed the world war General Gorgas an
nounced the organization of the ex-
tensive system devised for the ~"recon-
struction" for soldiers crippled in the
war which included the establishment
of orthopedic hospitals behind the fir
ing lines in France, reconstruction
hospitals in the great centers of Amer
lea and the retaining of crippled men
and preparation for resuming their vo-
cations or learning new ones.
General Gorgas reached the age linn
it while still on duty in France in
1913. When the war was over he was
retired from active service in the ar
my.
General Gorgas vas born in Mobile.
Ala, October 3, 1854, the o of a
confederate general. He was gradu-
ated from the University of the South
in 1875. He was appointed a surgeon
in the United States army in 1880.