William Crawford Gorgas
Dr. Walter Reed discovered that the Aedes mosquito transmits the yellow fever virus. William Crawford Gorgas, serving in Havana, Cuba, under Reed during the Spanish-American War, made good use of Reed's discovery. He eradicated breeding places for mosquitoes and took measures to prevent mosquitoes from biting infected patients and transmitting the disease to healthy individuals. (Malaria is transmitted by the Anopheles mosquito, which is present in the same areas as the Aedes mosquito.) Gorgas realized that mosquitoes also bred indoors. Legs of hospital beds were placed in flat dishes filled with water to keep tropical crawling bugs from getting onto patients. Gorgas treated this standing water and placed screens around patients to keep the disease from spreading. (The Gorgas House in Tuscaloosa has some of these dishes with the legs of a pie safe standing in them.)
The deLesseps company failed to build a canal across Panama because of a high death rate among workers. The United States acquired the Panama Canal Zone in l903 under President Theodore Roosevelt.
The years from 1900 to 1904 brought the gradual development of plans for digging the Panama Canal. There was early recognition of the necessity for expert sanitary advice upon the project and in 1902 Gorgas was transferred from Havana to Washington and assigned to this work. In March 1903 Congress raised him to the grade of Colonel in recognition of his services in Havana. For two years he studied the canal problem, reviewing the experience of the French on the isthmus and making visits to the Suez Canal and to Panama. Actual work upon the canal commenced in 1904, and Gorgas with his staff of assistants arrived in June of that year. He early encountered administration difficulties. Despite the positive knowledge that the French failure had been due to disease the American administration was disinclined to support adequate measures for preventing a repetition of that experience. The first Canal Commission, headed by Admiral John C. Walker, had strongly in mind the prevention of graft and extravagance.
Expenditures for sanitary improvements were regarded as falling under the latter head. It required a visitation of yellow fever, starting in November 1904, to obtain for Gorgas any substantial support for his work. He began in the Canal Zone the measures which had been highly successful in Havana. Again the mosquito was to be deprived of breeding places and cases of yellow fever segregated and protected from mosquitoes. The situation in Panama presented more difficulties than that in Havana and results were far less prompt. It was well into 1905 before yellow fever bad been eradicated, and in the meantime determined effort were being made to discredit Gorgas' work and to supplant him. It is probable that these could have been successful but for the interest aroused by a report made by Dr. Charles A. L. Reed of Cincinnati to the American Medical Association in March 1905, in which the obstructive hand of Commissioner Carl E. Grunsky was so largely featured. The discharge of the Walker Commission at about this time and the appointment of another headed by Theodore P. Shonts did little to mitigate Gorgas' troubles. Yellow fever was still prevalent and the new commissioners were dissatisfied that the first interest of the sanitary service was the elimination of mosquitoes rather than the general improvement of the cities of Panama and Colon.
They recommended the removal of Gorgas which not only drew the disapproval of President Roosevelt but caused an order for active support of his work. In November 1906 the President paid a visit to Panama and shortly thereafter Gorgas was made a member of the canal commission. For a time he had practically a free hand, but after the reorganization of the commission in 1908, with Colonel George A. Goethals as chairman and chief engineer, his troubles began anew. Goethals, given unusual powers by executive order, ruled the Canal Zone with a despotic control. He was free in criticism and centered his attacks upon the expense of the sanitary service. Despite the difficulties thrown around his work, due to lack of cooperation from the chief commissioner, Gorgas not only freed the Canal Zone from yellow fever but he made the cities of Panama and Colon models of sanitation comparable with any city of the United States.
In the meantime his reputation had extended until he was generally regarded as the world's foremost sanitary expert. His sanitation success made it possible for the U.S. to build the canal. He refused an offer in 1911 to become president of the University of Alabama because of his determination to see the canal project through to completion. He was the only U.S. official who remained on the canal project from beginning to end.
As U.S. Surgeon General during World War I, he was concerned about the sanitation of army camps and the health of U.S. soldiers. He refused lucrative private offers such as that from the Rockefeller Foundation. When the United States became involved in World War I, his attention turned to the care of the sick and wounded soldiers.
In the 1880s, while stationed at Brownsville, Texas, Gorgas met Marie Doughty, who was visiting her sister at the army base. She contracted a nearly fatal case of yellow fever, Gorgas contracted a mild case, and the two met while they recovered. They were married in l885 and had one daughter.
Gorgas was known as a most compassionate, caring doctor. One patient remembered that it was worth having yellow fever just to be cared for by Gorgas. His personality made him extremely successful in persuading public officials to follow his sanitation instructions. When he retired in 1918, he accepted an offer from the Rockefeller Foundation to travel to South America to advise on the eradication of yellow fever. Thereafter he traveled to Europe on his way to South Africa to consult on diseases there. He died in London in 1920 en route to South Africa. After a huge funeral in St. Paul's Cathedral, he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington, D.C.
