Medicine: Love of Gorgas

“They know more about Gorgas, down there in those tropical countries, than we do here. They love him more than we do, if possible.”

The speaker was Dr. Franklin Martin, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Gorgas Memorial Institute. He spoke of the late Col. William Crawford Gorgas, medical expert of the U. S. Army, whose prophylactic approach to the swamps, cisterns and gutters of the Canal Zone and Havana meant the annihilation of mosquitoes. Since in those places the buzzing, spiralling mosquito brought yellow fever, other ravaging tropical plagues, the extermination of the insect was a mighty mission. Therefore is Col. Gorgas’ memory revered in lands which before his coming were “fastnesses of death.”

At a Washington luncheon, last week, Dr. Martin addressed 21 ambassadors of Central & South American countries. Panama, he stated, had already donated a site for the proposed half-million dollar Gorgas Memorial Laboratory, where tropical diseases would be studied, remedies devised. The U. S. had already appropriated an annual fund of $50,000 for research & administrative work. Dr. Martin proposed that the 21 Latin-American countries should participate, on a population pro rata basis, in contributing a total of $37,500 annually for the same purposes.

The newly-appointed superintendent of the Gorgas Foundation is Rear Admiral Gary Travers Grayson, onetime physician to Woodrow Wilson. He will shortly leave for Panama to assume his duties.