Gorgas, William

Gorgas, William (Crawford)

(born Oct. 3, 1854, Mobile, Ala., U.S.—died July 3, 1920, London, Eng.) U.S. Army surgeon. Son of the Confederate general Josiah Gorgas (1818–83), he served in the U.S. Army for many years. In charge of sanitation measures in Havana with the army's medical corps in 1898, he conducted experiments on mosquito transmission of yellow fever and effectively eliminated it from the area. Sent to Panama in 1904, he eradicated yellow fever from the Canal Zone and brought malaria under control, removing the chief obstacles to building the Panama Canal. He was surgeon general of the U.S. Army from 1914 to 1918.