Mosquito Warrior

"General William Crawford Gorgas (1854-1920) was a renowned pioneer in tropical disease and public health control. A scion of Confederate elites, the contours of Gorgas's his life were directly shaped by yellow fever from birth, but it wasn't until Gorgas, Walter Reed, and other members of the US Army Medical Corps stationed in Cuba explored Carlos Finlay's revolutionary mosquito theory that Gorgas discovered his ultimate foe-the Aedes aegypti and Anopholes mosquitos responsible for transmitting some of the world's deadliest infectious diseases. After successfully clearing Havana of mosquitos and eradicating the spread of yellow fever on the ground (while Reed's team proved it in the lab), Gorgas became chief sanitary officer for the US in the Panama Canal Zone. There he spent the next eight years fighting mosquitos and developing the medical and public health infrastructure necessary to combat mosquito-borne diseases on the isthmus. His efforts created the conditions necessary for the successful construction of the Panama Canal where others had failed, improving global health and empowering US interests abroad through hard and soft power, alike. Gorgas's subsequent missions to Latin America and Africa for the Rockefeller Foundation sought to reduce human suffering and improve global health but were also ideologically charged, as evidenced in his speech "The Conquest of the Tropics for the White Race." In 1914, Gorgas became Surgeon General of the US Army and presided over the expansion of the Army's medical service and modernization of the public health system in the years leading up to and during World War I. Celebrated during his lifetime, Gorgas has largely faded from historical memory but his story remains relevant to the threat of infectious disease we face today and the challenges to public health in a politically complex, globalized world. Carol R. Byerly's definitive biography explains his effacement and restores Gorgas to the historical narrative, expertly situating his life and work in context with his times and tracing his legacy into the present-a cautionary tale of what happens when public health becomes politicized and a reminder that science alone cannot conquer disease"--