1845-1920
Army Surgeon and Sanitation Expert

Army Doctor.

William Crawford Gorgas was born on 3 October 1845 in Mobile, Alabama. His father, Josiah, served as chief of ordnance for the Confederate army during the Civil War and later as a college president. His mother, Amelia, was a member of a prominent Mobile family. Gorgas received a bachelor's degree from the University of the South in 1875 and four years later finished his M.D. at Bellevue Hospital Medical College in New York. After a year as an intern at Bellevue, Gorgas entered the military as a first lieutenant at a salary of $1,500 per year. He remained in the U.S. Army Medical Corps until the year before his death.

Yellow Fever.

During the next two decades Gorgas rotated through remote military posts in the United States, including forts in Texas, North Dakota, and Florida. Gorgas had his first...