Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 2162

WILLIAM CRAWFORD GORGAS (1854-1920) A few general directions with regard to destroying mosquitoes, particularly the yellow fever mosquito. Government Printing Office 1904 14 pp. 23 cm.

Gorgas, born in Alabama, was the son of an army officer who resigned his commission with the Union Army to eventually become a general in the Confederate Army and later president of the University of Alabama. Gorgas was unsuccessful in his attempts to gain entrance to the United States Military Academy at West Point and instead attended Bellevue Hospital Medical College in New York City where he graduated in 1879 and then entered the Army Medical Corps. He served successfully at various Army posts during the ensuing years and in 1898 was transferred to Havana, Cuba where he was appointed chief sanitary officer. Gorgas was initially skeptical of the idea that the Aedes aegypti mosquito could be the transmitter of yellow fever but was convinced by the work of Reed's (see No. 2137) Yellow Fever Commission. As a result he carried out an ambitious program to exterminate the mosquito and Havana was soon free of the dread disease. In this slender pamphlet Gorgas summarizes the work of Reed's Commission and describes the detailed procedures he employed to effectively control the mosquitoes.

See Related Record(s): 2137