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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    his retirement, at the age of sixty-five, on October 4, 1918. He never lost his interest in world sanitation. While he was stationed in the Canal Zone, he visited Guayaquil, Ecuador, and mapped out a plan for the control of yellow fever in that disease-ridden district. In 1916 he was made chief of the special Yellow Fever Commission of the Rockefeller Foundation, and spent several months in South America making surveys and laying plans for the eradication of yellow fever from localities in which it still prevailed. After his retirement as surgeon general, he im¬ mediately accepted the assignment to direct the yellow fever work which had been undertaken by the International Health Board of the Rockefeller Foun¬ dation. On May 7, 1920, he sailed for England, en route to West Africa, where he was to investigate the yellow fever situation. He fell ill in London on May 30, 1920, and died on July 4, 1920. II. THE GENIUS To write of Gorgas is to attempt to write of the infinite—the subject is fascinating, but one’s powers of analysis become exhausted in the face of its mys¬ tery and masterfulness. Gorgas was a genius whose life and achievements as they will be recorded in his¬ tory are comparable with those of Lister and Edison. Each of these men, with a mind untrammeled and open, wrought miracles from the commonplace ma¬ terials which were at hand, the real significance of which was not recognized either by his contem¬ poraries or his predecessors. [4]
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