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THE PANAMA TIMES
5
BOOK REVIEWS AND
NOTICES William Crawford Gorgas, His Life and Work; by Marie D.
Gorgas and Burton J. Hendrick, Illus. Large 8 vo., 359 pg.
Doubleday, Page & Co., New York, 1924. ------- The title of this official biogra-
phy of Gen. Gorgas as borne on
the title-page is "William Craw-
ford Gorgas; His Life and Work.
The jacket, however, carries a
sort of sub-title, interpolated im-
mediately after William Crawford
Gorgas, viz. "The Conqueror of
Yellow Fever," and one feels that,
while it was not necessary so to
ticket Gen. Gorgas, it would have
been fitting to make this best of
his titles a part of the book's title. And one feels this the more af-
ter one has read the book for the
Gorgas whose life it describes is
pre-eminently, not to say exclu-
sively, the Conqueror of Yellow
Fever and the "Work" recounted
is the Conquering. It should not be inferred from
this comment that the Life is
biassed, thrown out of proportion,
by the prominence given to yel-
low fever and its conquest or that
it is lacking in those personal
touches which Mrs. Gorgas' co-
authorship would lead one to hope
for and without which it would
be very unsatisfactory to any
friend or even any mere admirer
of Gen. Gorgas. On the contrary
there is much that is personal,--
intimate, and one gets a very vi-
vid picture of an extremely human
personality in all its relationships:
the first chapter, for instance, en-
titled "Early Days of Fort Brown,"
tells very delightfully of how Miss
Doughty first met Dr. Gorgas and
how she, eventually, capitulated.
Incidentally it shows the young
doctor to have had much senti-
ment, some sentimentality--he
asked for "a flower and a bit of
ribbon" very early in the siege--,
a sense of humor as keen as his
sense of duty and a whole lot of
other "simpatico" qualities. And
yet the first sentence in the chap-
ter, hence the first sentence in the
book, is: "At every stage of his career
William Crawford Gorgas seemed
to confront the gaunt spectre of
yellow fever: it was an important
influence even in the love story
of the doctor's life." and the last sentence of the
chapter is, all of which, by the
way, is told in Mrs. Gorgas' own
words, is "It would be untrue to say that
Yellow Jack was best man at our
wedding--but it would be perfect-
ly true to say that in a sense he
was an usher." From the second chapter--"An-
cestry and Youth"--, which is not
quite so redolent of yellow fever,
one gleans much significant in-
formation: that, though the name
Gorgas may once have been
Spanish, the family, when it
reached America, was thoroughly
Dutch and Protestant; that Gen.
Gorgas' immediate ancestors lived
in Pennsylvania; that his father,
Josiah Gorgas, graduated from
West Point, spent many years in
various southern army posts,--in
several of which he came into
close and horryifying contact with
Yellow fever--, married a Miss
Gayle of Alabama, threw in his
lot with the Confederacy, became
its Chief of Ordnance and one of
its ablest generals, and fell with
it ; that William Crawford, the
oldest son of Josiah, was born at
Toulsminville, Alabama, October
3rd., 1854 ; had a very normal
childhood, a boyhood marked by a
love of sports, a dislike for study,
a keenness for combat and a de-
termination to be a soldier which,
in view of the surroundings in
which he was brought up, was
hardly to be wondered at: he
heard the firing on Sumter, spent
his most impressionable years in
the belligerant atmosphere of
Civil War Richmond and saw daily
at close quarters Jefferson Davis,
Albert Sidney Johnston, Lee,
Stonewall Jackson. On the fall of the Confederacy
the Gorgas family found its way
to Baltimore. Of his own arrival
there Gorgas once said "I first
came to Baltimore a ragged, bare-
foot little rebel, with empty
pockets and an empty stomach."
Josiah Gorgas, the father, changed
his uniform for overalls, became
manager of a blast furnace and
spent four unprofitable, well-nigh
disastrous years at it. But the South was gradually
finding educational billets for its
distressed military leaders and
Josiah Gorgas became President
of Sewanee University. It was there that William Craw-
ford first exhibited any real in-
terest in study. He had long since
established a considerable reputa-
tion as a college athlete--his per-
formances, especially at base-ball,
swimming and boxing appear to
have been really first class--but
his class-work left much to be
desired. The change began with
William's overhearing his father
lament his disinclination to study
and the day came--for William
had already begun to develope a
conscience--when the delighted
father could record in his diary
that "Willie has turned scholar
since nearly a year ago and is
perhaps the first scholar here." It was at Sewanee, too, that
he definitely decided to study me-
dicine ; all his family's efforts to
get him an appointment to West
Point had failed and he would be-
come a soldier; the only road was
the medical profession. It is not necessary to follow the
book through his life as a medical
student. He got his degree from
Bellevue in 1879 and, after a brief
stay there as an interne, entered
the Medical Department of the U.
S. Army in June of 1880. A story having reference to this
incident and very characteristic
of Gorgas brings the chapter on
"Ancestry and Youth" to a close:
Gorgas and Vaughn were again in
consultation and had already
reached one decision when Gorgas
turned to his associate and re-
marked, with a twinkle in his eye: "This is your judgment and it
is mine, Vaughn. But remember
that your judgment and mine have
at times been at fault. Do you
recollect that I recommended the
burning of the village at Siboney
in 1898, in order to stamp out yel-
low fever? I have often wondered
how many infected mosquitoes
were destroyed in that conflagra-
tion." The chapter "Yellow Fever
Meets Its Master" begins with
the significant statement: "In 1898 Gorgas returned to
Havana and, after a few months,
became chief sanitary officer." There follows a very interesting
account of various yellow fever
epidemics illustrative of the fact
that, because of their psychologi-
cal as well as their physical ef-
fects, conquest of the Tropics
would have been impossible so
long as yellow fever remained un-
conquered. Extracts from the ac-
count of the Philadelphia epidemic
of 1793 follow: "As phases of business and com-
munity life came suddenly to an
end; banks closed, factories shut
their doors, leaving thousands
without employment, newspapers
stopped publication, and churches
ceased their functions for want
of congregations. Sick persons
sometimes fell dead in the streets,
their corpses lying for weeks with-
out burial. Almost the only occu-
pations were the absurd attemps
to check the disease. There was
an idea that the "purification" of
the atmosphere would bring relief:
to accomplish this bonfires were
lighted at every street corner and
cannon were constantly booming.
All those who ventured out car-
ried sponges at their mouths or
smelling bottles of vinegar and
camphor; not only men, but wo-
men, were constantly smoking ci-
gars, for tobacco was regarded as
a preventive ; while others spent
most of their time chewing garlic.
A tarred rope was also believed
to have protective virtues, and
nearly everybody who stepped out-
doors carried such a talisman." Again, as illustrative of the
universal ignorance concerning the
cause of yellow fever: "Probably the public terror in-
spired by yellow fever was caused
chiefly by the fact that it behaved
so mysteriously. It was unlike any
other known disease and the most
grotesque explanations were given
of its cause. It was disseminated
by "noxious gases," by "swamp
miasma," by fermentation, by dry
particles of dust, by the explosion
of subtle poisons in the air, by
putrefying vegetable matter. Cer-
tain learned gentlemen maintain-
ed that it was caused by the Gulf
Stream, while others insisted that
eating apples conveyed the infec-
tion. The medical faculty almost
came to blows over the question
of contagion. So great a man as
Dr. Benjamin Rush declared that
yellow fever was not contagious
--"and he found the explanation
of the Philadelphia epidemic in
decaying coffee on the docks."
And yet "Dr. Rush notes that the
'moschetoes were very plentiful
about Philadelphia in 1793 and
Noah Webster, describing the New
York visitation of 1795, says that
'musquetoes were never before
known by the oldest inhabitants
to have been so numerous.` The
accounts of practically all epide-
mics since have contained the
same comment." This picture of the "monster
whose destruction now became the
chief duty of Gorgas" is followed
a picturesque description of san-
itary--unsanitary, mejor dicho--
conditions in Havana ; a considera-
tion of Gorgas' belief, based on
the fomites theory, that he could
rid the city of yellow faver by
cleaning it up ; an account of his
Herculean efforts in that direc-
tion and of their excellent effect
on general health conditions, but
their complete failure to eradicate
or even arrest yellow fever ; an
acknowledgement of Finlay's dis-
covery of the true--the Ste-
gomyia--theory and a careful ana-
lysis of his absolute failure to
prove it--to produce "a single
case of yellow fever by the bite
of a mosquito;" a tribute to the
work of Carter, Reed, Carroll,
Lazear, Agramonte, in proving the
Stegomyia theory and giving it a
practical application. __________________________________________________ SHIP $6,000,000 WORTH OF GOLD EVERY YEAR |
