Major General William Crawford Gorgas / [Franklin H. Martin].

  • Franklin Henry Martin
Date:
[1929]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Major General William Crawford Gorgas / [Franklin H. Martin]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    (Gayle) Gorgas, daughter of Governor Gayle, of Alabama. Gorgas was graduated from the University of the South with the degree of xUB. in 1875, and from Bellevue Hospital Medical College with the degree of M.D. in 1879. He entered the Medical Depart¬ ment of the United States Army on June 16, 1880, as first lieutenant, was advanced to captain in 1885, and to major in 1898. In 1880, yellow fever was prevalent in Brownsville, Texas, in violent epidemic form. Conditions were bad beyond the power of words to portray to those who have no knowledge of conditions in a yellow fever stricken city prior to 1880. The government as well as the people at large had been appealed to. Gorgas, with the rank of lieutenant, was sent to Fort Brown, near Brownsville, to assist in the medi¬ cal care of the civilian population. There he first met Miss Marie Cook Doughty, who was seriously ill of yellow fever, and there he also contracted the disease. He married Miss Doughty in Cincinnati on Septem¬ ber 15, 1885. Later, Gorgas was in active service in Florida, in the West, in the Dakotas, and in the old Indian Territory. He accompanied the military expedition against Santiago in 1898. Fate, possibly with a pur¬ pose, visited his system with yellow fever in early life, thereby making him immune to the disease. Because of his practical knowledge of yellow fever transmis¬ sion, he was appointed chief sanitary officer of Ha¬ vana, which post he occupied from 1898 to 1902. It was in 1900 that Gorgas was in close contact with the investigation into the course of yellow fever [2]
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