Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 87.djvu/184



Dr. W. C. Gorgas, surgeon-general, U. S. Army. General Gorgas (then major) was the chief sanitary officer of Havana, in charge of sanitary work in that city from 1898 to 1902. He immediately grasped the importance of the discoveries of the Army Yellow Fever Commission, and put in operation methods of combating yellow fever, based upon the mosquito idea, which eliminated the disease in Havana. He was made colonel and assistant surgeon general by a special act of congress for this work. He was chief sanitary officer of the Panama Canal Zone from March, 1904, until the completion of the canal, and controlled yellow fever, malaria and other tropical diseases so perfectly as to prove beyond all peradventure the feasibility of an extended occupation of tropical regions by white races.