Career
Gorgas developed an interest in yellow fever and soon became one of the army's leading specialists in that disease. During the Spanish-American War he was in charge of its yellow fever camp at Siboney, near Havana, Cuba. After the war he became sanitary officer of Havana, a city that had been plagued with yellow fever outbreaks for centuries.
After a group of scientists headed by Major Walter Reed identified a certain type of mosquito as the primary transmit ter of yellow fever, Gorgas began a campaign to rid Havana of that mosquito. It was so successful that within a few months yellow fever had all but disappeared.
When the U.S. government undertook construction of the Panama Canal, Gorgas was named to direct sanitary operations in Panama. After an initial failure to curb disease outbreaks, health conditions in Panama improved markedly.
Anticipating U.S. participation in World War I, he worked closely with the American Medical Association, of which he was elected president in 1908, and other organizations for medical preparedness. Thanks to this planning, even the 1918 influenza pandemic did not prevent the army from greatly reducing deaths due to disease.
After retirement, he accepted a position with the Rockefeller Foundation to try to wipe out yellow fever in the few small areas where it was still occurring. In London on his way to west Africa, he was stricken by a fatal illness and died in a London hospital on July 3, 1920.