7 Quotes & Sayings By William Crawford Gorgas

William Crawford Gorgas was born at Beaufort, South Carolina, on November 30th, 1858. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1880. His first overseas tour of duty took place in the Mediterranean during the Spanish-American War, where he saw action as a commander of one of the sloop-of-war gunboats Read more

He was promoted to Lieutenant in 1882, and two years later was assigned to duty at the Marine Hospital Service office in Washington, D.C., where he remained until 1894. During his four years there he wrote extensively on naval medicine, editing medical articles for the Navy Medical Journal and serving as associate editor of that publication from 1891 to 1893. In 1895 he was appointed assistant surgeon at the U.S.

Naval Station at Cavite, Pampanga, where he remained until 1902. He then moved to Manila as chief medical officer for the Philippine Commission. While here he published The Army Practitioner (1906), The Medical Officer (1908), and The Philippine Islands (1909) which covered life in the islands under Spanish rule and under American control for almost forty years.

These were widely acclaimed works on medical topics throughout America, Europe, and Asia; indeed they were translated into Japanese and Chinese languages and received flattering reviews throughout the world. === === === === === === == == == == == == Author: Nigel Slater

1
My dear Gorgas, Instead of being simply satisfied to make friends and draw your pay, it is worth doing your duty, to the best of your ability, for duty’s sake; and in doing this, while the indolent sleep, you may accomplish something that will be of real value to humanity. Your good friend, ReedDr. Walter Reed encouraging Dr. William Gorgas who went on to make history eradicating Yellow Fever in Havana, 1902 and Panama, 1906, liberating the entire North American continent from centuries of Yellow Fever epidemics. . William Crawford Gorgas
2
Fortunately for the cause of science and of humanity, we had as Governor-General of Cuba at that time General Leonard Wood, of the United States Army. General Wood had been educated as a physician, and had a very proper idea of the great advantages which would accrue to the world if we could establish the fact that yellow fever was conveyed by the mosquito, and his medical training made him a very competent judge as to the steps necessary to establish such fact. General Wood during the whole course of the investigations took the greatest interest in the experiments, and assisted the Board in every way he could. William Crawford Gorgas
3
But such is the nature of man that as soon as you begin to force him to do a thing, from that moment he begins to seek ways by which he can avoid doing the thing you are trying to force upon him. A man with malaria parasites in his blood is a danger to his companions. To kill all the parasites, he was then required to continue doses of quinine a week or ten days after his fever. When the convalescing men were given their daily dose of quinine they would manage to throw their tablets out of the dispensary window. The old turkey-gobbler pet of the hospital gobbled up all the tablets he could find. He became so dissipated he finally developed a species of blindness caused by too much quinine. I cannot vouch for this, but I was often twitted with this story as an illustration of how the men were treating prophylactic quinine. . William Crawford Gorgas
4
In times of stress and danger such as come about as the result of an epidemic, many tragic and cruel phases of human nature are brought out, as well as many brave and unselfish ones. William Crawford Gorgas
5
It is almost impossible for contemporaries to judge the true value of discoveries, or to give the proper position to the men of their own time who make these discoveries. The Surgeon-General of the Public Health Service expected the greatest results to flow from his commission of medical officers, but the conclusions of the Board turned out to be all wrong, while he did not notice the report from his own subordinate, Dr. H. R. Carter, which turned out to be pure gold and was one of the great steps in establishing the true method of the transmission of Yellow Fever. William Crawford Gorgas
6
The case which I reported on September 26, 1901, was really the last which occurred in Havana. Of course we did not know it at the time, but this case marked the first conquest of yellow fever in an endemic center; the first application of the mosquito theory to practical sanitary work in any disease. William Crawford Gorgas