Mosquito Warrior

Yellow Fever, Public Health, and the Forgotten Career of General William C. Gorgas

By Carol R. Byerly

University of Alabama Press

"This fascinating book is as much of an account of mosquito-borne illnesses, research, and treatment as it is the story of Gorgas's life. Will draw biography, military history, and medical history readers." —Library Journal, starred review

Mosquito Warrior tells the engrossing story of General William C. Gorgas (1854–1920), the once-renowned pioneer in tropical disease research and public health. His fascinating life illuminates vast transformations in the United States, including the end of the Civil War and the industrialization of the US military and economy, the emergence of germ theory and the modernization of the public health system, and the rise of the United States as a world power.

A scion of Confederate elites, Gorgas came of age amidst war and disease and the politics of racial segregation. He followed his father into military service as an army medical officer, treating troops on America’s western frontier posts. During the US occupation of Cuba, Gorgas applied Walter Reed’s research on the theory of mosquito-borne disease transmission, ending centuries of yellow fever in Havana through the eradication of the deadly Aedes aegypti mosquito. Applying similar strategies on the isthmus of Panama against yellow fever and malaria, Gorgas enabled the completion of the Panama Canal, then the largest engineering project in the world. Hailed a hero, he pursued his fight against mosquito-borne disease throughout the tropics, expanding American interests as he went. Appointed as US Army surgeon general on the eve of World War I, Gorgas resumed work modernizing the army health care system, strengthening US medical and military authority on the world stage.

Celebrated in life, Gorgas’s reputation fell victim to competing political interests and jealousies after his death, a cautionary tale about historical memory and the politics of science and personality. Carol R. Byerly’s balanced and contemporary examination of Gorgas illuminates his complex legacy in medicine and public health, military history, and American ambitions at the dawn of US global ascendency.

Reviews
Author

This fascinating book is as much of an account of mosquito-borne illnesses, research, and treatment as it is the story of Gorgas's life. Will draw biography, military history, and medical history readers.'
—Library Journal, starred review

‘[With] historian of military medicine Carol Byerly’s masterful biography of William Crawford Gorgas. . . . his professional reputation, eclipsed for decades by sniping contemporary military medical colleagues, is secure.’
—CHOICE

‘What a magnificent book! Carol Byerly’s Mosquito Warrior supplants all others as the definitive biography of Dr. William Gorgas. The research and storytelling are extraordinary. I learned not just about Gorgas and yellow fever but also about the intimacy and expansiveness of history itself. I loved every word.’
—Elizabeth Fenn, author of Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775–82

Carol Byerly has another home run! Like her earlier works on aspects of the Army Medical Department in the era of emerging scientific medicine, Mosquito Warrior: Yellow Fever, Public Health, and the Forgotten Career of General William C. Gorgas deals with a topic that is known a little bit by some people but not thoroughly by many. The previous biographies were without critical apparatus; the most recent was more than 70 years ago. This thorough, critical, readable book will last at least that long.’
—Dale C Smith, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Military Medicine and History, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences

Mosquito Warrior is timely and necessary to place William Gorgas in the historical narrative of medical history as well as public health in a broader and more closely researched biography. Much of Gorgas’s professional and medical accomplishments were not in the record of historical discourse, and with Mosquito Warrior, that will be corrected.’
—Deanne Stephens, author of Plague Among the Magnolias: The 1878 Yellow Fever Epidemic in Mississippi and The Mississippi Gulf Coast Seafood Industry: A People’s History

Carol R. Byerly specializes in the history of military medicine. Byerly is the author of Good Tuberculosis Men: The Army Medical Department’s Struggle with Tuberculosis and Fever of War: The Influenza Epidemic in the U.S. Army during World War I.

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