Background
Gihon Albert Leary was born in Philadelphia.
Gihon Albert Leary was born in Philadelphia.
Gihon received his preliminary education at Central High School in that city, and graduated in medicine from the Philadelphia College of Medicine and Surgery in 1852, at the age of nineteen.
In 1853-54, Gihon was a professor of chemistry and toxicology in the college, then on May 1, 1855, he entered the navy as an assistant surgeon.
In 1856, while serving on the China station, he took part in the battle on the Pearl River, near Canton. Two years later, he was ordered home, assigned to the Dolphin of the Brazil Squadron, and sent on the Paraguay Expedition.
In 1860, ranking passed assistant surgeon, he was ordered to the naval hospital in New York, then on August 1, 1861, he was promoted surgeon and assigned to duty on the St. Louis.
Most of his Civil War service was in European waters. The war over, he spent two years at the Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Navy Yard, following which he was assigned to Idaho, store-ship of the Asiatic Squadron, on which he was shipwrecked in 1869. On November 7, 1872, he was promoted medical inspector, and as such served in the Navy Department in Washington, as fleet surgeon on the European station, and as surgeon of the Naval Academy.
He was commissioned medical director August 20, 1879, and served in the naval hospitals at Washington, Mare Island, and New York. He became a senior medical director with the rank of commodore in 1895 and on September 28 of that year, he was retired from active duty with the same rank.
It was a disappointment to him and to many of his friends that he had not been made surgeon-general of the navy. He lived in robust health and vigor until November 14, 1901, when he suffered an apoplectic stroke which proved fatal in a few days.
Gihon's Practical Suggestions in Naval Hygiene (1871), although written before the modern age of bacteriology and therefore of little value as to the real causes or prevention of specific diseases, is interestingly written and reveals keen observation and thorough appreciation of such major sanitary faults as overcrowding, overwork, personal uncleanliness, brutality, poor ventilation, poor rations, promiscuity, all too common in the navy at that time, and of their evil effects.
Gihon was a member of numerous American and foreign medical, historical, and scientific societies.
In person, Gihon was very pleasant and versatile. Possessing notable gifts as a speaker and writer, he wrote many papers and addresses on naval hygiene, public health, and sanitary reform.
His attributing an outbreak of yellow fever to rotting chips of wood left on shipboard for years was no less intelligent than the guesses made by many leaders of the profession.
Gihon had married, on April 3, 1860, Clara Montford Campfield, of Savannah, Georgia, who with two sons survived him.