GORGAS, WILLIAM CRAWFORD American army surgeon, was born at Mobile (Ala.), on Oct. 3, 1854. He was educated at the University of the South, Sewanee (Tenn.), and Bellevue hospital medical college, New York, taking his M.D. in 1879. In 188o he entered the Medical Corps of the U.S. Army. During the Spanish-American War he served as major in the Medical Corps, and was sent, after the Santiago ex pedition, to Havana, where he was in charge of yellow fever patients. From 1898 to 1902 he was chief officer in charge of sanitation measures in Havana, and there conducted many ex periments in connection with the discovery that yellow fever was transmitted by the mosquito. Because of his success in eliminat ing yellow fever there he was made assistant surgeon general, U.S. Army, with the rank of colonel, by special act of Congress in 1903.
In 1904 Gorgas was sent as chief sanitary officer to Panama, where two of the main obstacles to building the canal were yellow fever and malaria. Here again his methods were so effective that in two years he eliminated yellow fever from the Canal region. Malaria also was brought under control. In 1907 he was ap pointed a member of the Isthmian Canal commission by Presi dent Roosevelt, and the following year was U.S. delegate to the first Pan-American Medical Congress, held at Santiago, Chile. He was president of the American Medical Association, 1908-09. In 1913 he was called to the Rand gold mines in South Africa to suggest means for combating the frequent epidemics of influenza. This he found was largely due to crowding the labourers together in barracks.
In 1914 he was made surgeon general, U.S. Army, with the rank of brigadier general, becoming major general in 1916. In 1918 he was retired. He then became the permanent director of the yellow-fever work of the international health board of the Rockefeller Foundation. He went to Central America, and under his direction investigations of yellow fever were made in Guaya quil, Ecuador and Guatemala. In 1919 he accepted a contract with the Government of Peru to carry out a sanitary programme in that country. He died in London, July 3, 192o, and was buried in the Arlington National Cemetery, Washington (D.C.).
In his honour were established the Gorgas Memorial Institute of Tropical and Preventive Medicine, Inc., Washington, D. C., and the Gorgas Memorial Laboratory of Tropical Research, Panama.