OF EPIDEMICS OF THE PAST: W. GORGAS VS. CARLOS FINLAY

By Juan Montoya

At the risk of beating on a dead horse, or public sanitarian in this case, we are asking that the administration at Texas Southmost College – in a demonstration of academic honesty and integrity – remove or correct the inscription crediting William Gorgas with discovering "the cause and prevention of yellow fever."

It's not that we don't enjoy the romantic version of history, it's just that propagating the myth is doing a disservice to students attending TSC, the public, and to learning in general. An institution of higher learning should not remain blind to the truth.

In truth, Gorgas did get he get here in 1882 and he did "study" yellow fever, but it was mainly because he and his future wife were struck with the disease while at the fort. He never discovered – or had a clue – that the disease was a mosquito-borne disease transmitted by mosquitoes Aedes aegypti which bred in water.

That research, and determination confirmed by none other than Walter Reed, was performed by Cuban epidemiologist Juan Carlos Finlay, recognized as the pioneer in the research of yellow fever. Findlay published his first paper in 1881, a year before Gorgas got here and took ill with the disease.

The Gorgas myth is also inscribed in a granite marker on a bronze plaque that states: "Dr. William Crawford Gorgas discovered the cure for yellow fever while he was stationed at Ft. Brown."

Even the website of the former UTB-TSC listing the historical buildings stated that Gorgas, "is credited with proving the mosquito carried the disease and finding ways to eliminate it. His efforts virtually eliminated yellow fever."

A memorial plaque was placed on the Fort Brown hospital building presented in a ceremony by the Brownsville Historical Association (BHA) and Brownsville Junior College to commemorate Gorgas in February, 1949. Later that same year the BHA, in conjunction with other organizations, were able to have Gorgas elected to the Hall of Fame.

Gorgas Drive and the TSC’s Gorgas Science Foundation also bear the name of the doctor.

Then, of course, there's the romantic angle. According to this legend, Gorgas met his future wife Miss Marie Cook Doughty as he was staring into the open grave at the Ft. Brown National Cemetery prepared for her when he was asked by another doctor to read a burial service for his wife-to-be. 

He tended to her and, of course, she survived and they lived happily ever after as a sort of yellow-fever tag team trouncing the disease around the world.

In fact, this romantic character even died on the right day, July 4, 1920.

Mythbuster:

The real discoverer that the disease was carried by mosquitoes was Finlay, a Cuban, or to be more PC, an Hispanic. His discovery led researchers like Reed and other leading medical investigators of the time to re-examine their thinking and consider his meticulous research.

The Philip S. Hench Yellow Fever Collection web page states that:

"For twenty years of his professional life, renowned Cuban physician and scientist Carlos J. Finlay stood at the center of a vigorously debated medical controversy. The etiology of yellow fever – its causes and origins – had puzzled medical practitioners since the earliest recorded cases of the disease in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Periodic epidemics of yellow fever ravaged the population of Finlay's native Cuba, particularly affecting the citizens of Havana, where he set up a medical practice in 1864. Finlay was intensely interested in epidemiology and public health, and his initial work on cholera – the result of a severe outbreak of the disease in Havana in 1867 – challenged the accepted wisdom of medical authorities.

His conclusion that the disease was transmitted by mosquitoes, though later verified, was rejected by publishers at the time. Finlay soon afterwards began research on yellow fever, publishing his first paper on it in 1872. Here the same keen observations and logical deductions which informed his analysis of cholera lead him to propose in 1881 that the Culex mosquito be "hypothetically considered as the agent of transmission of yellow fever."

(By the way, Gorgas received a medical degree from New York's Bellevue Hospital Medical College in 1876, four years after Finlay's initial claims. Gorgas joined the U.S. Army Medical Corps in 1880, years after Finlay's research had begun. He didn't get to Ft. Brown until 1882 and stayed until 1884.)

When the Walter Reed Yellow Fever Commission decided to test the mosquito theory, Finlay provided the mosquitoes, and with the Commission's first scientifically valid success, Walter Reed wrote triumphantly, "The case is a beautiful one, and will be seen by the Board of Havana Experts, to-day, all of whom, except Finlay, consider the theory a wild one!"

The full run of experiments at Camp Lazear vindicated Finlay's two-decade-long struggle. In the glow of that early success, Reed acknowledged that "it was Finlay's theory, and he deserves much for having suggested it."

Gorgas, who later applied the results of the experiments to a public health campaign which made possible the construction of the Panama Canal, characterized Finlay's contribution in this way:"His reasoning for selecting the Stegomyia as the bearer of yellow fever is the best piece of logical reasoning that can be found in medicine anywhere."