Husk

of army supplies, including large amounts of
clothing and medicines as well as ordnance.
Among his interesting acquisitions were rifles
and cannon from the Austrian government. It
is impossible now to estimate the contribution
made by this means to the military strength of
the South. Unquestionably Huse showed much
energy and was always supported by his im-
mediate chief in Richmond, Col. Josiah Gorgas,
chief of ordnance, who wrote: "He succeeded,
with very little money, in buying a good supply,
and in running my department in debt for nearly
half a million sterling, the very best proof of his
fitness for his place" (Rowland, post, VIII, 311).
Captain Bulloch gives as his opinion that Huse's
efforts were of great importance in enabling the
South to check McClellan's advance on Rich-
mond in 1862 (J. D. Bulloch, The Secret Service
of the Confederate States in Europe, 1884,1, 53).
As a Northerner, Huse was suspected of dis-
loyalty by some Southerners and suffered from
the constant bickerings and charges of financial
malpractice so rife among the Confederates
abroad. There seems no reason to question his
loyalty and business honesty, however. At the
end of the war he was left practically penniless
with a large family.

Huse returned to the United States about 1868.
After being concerned in several business en-
terprises, he started in 1876 a school at Sing
Sing, N. Y., to prepare candidates for the Mili-
tary Academy at West Point. In 1879 the school
was moved to Highland Falls, where for some
twenty years it was successfully carried on,
among those preparing there being men who
have risen to the highest rank in the army. Huse
died at Highland Falls at the age of seventy-
four.

[Huse's very brief reminiscences, The Supplies for
the Confederate Army (1904), are those of an old man,
and though helpful are incomplete and not always ac-
curate. His son, Admiral Harry P. Huse, has furnished
information regarding certain facts. An interesting let-
ter from Huse appears in John Bigelow's Retrospec-
tions of an Active Life, II (1909)1 452 & See also
G. W. Cullum, Biog. Reg. of the Officers and Grads. U.
$. Mil. Acad, (ard ed, 1891); Thirty-Seventh Ann.
Reunion Asso. Grads. U. S. Mil. Acad. (1906); War
of the Rebellion: Official Records {Army), 4 ser,, vols.
I, II, (Navy) 2 ser., vols. II, III; Dunbar Rowland,
Jefferson Daw, Constitutioralist (1933), vols. VIII,
X; Confed. Veteran (Nashville), Feb., May 1905;

H.D.J.

HUSK, CHARLES ELLSWORTH (Dec
19, i872~Mar. 20,1916), physician, was bom in
Shabbona, DeKalb County, 111., to William Husk,
a village merchant and Celia (Norton) Husk
That his first name frequently appears as Carlos
is accounted for by his career in Mexico. He

Husk

was educated in the grade school of his native
town and in the Aurora fill.) High School,
taught in the public schools of Aurora, and be-
came principal of the Western High School of
that city. He resigned this position in 1895 to
study medicine at the College of Physicians and
Surgeons in Chicago, from which he was grad-
uated in 1898. Immediately after graduation he
married Corona B. Kirkpatrick of Waterman,
III., in his native county, and accepted a position
in Mexico where a classmate had preceded him.
His first employment was as company surgeon
for the American Smelting and Refining Com-
pany at Tepezala, Aguascalientes, He after-
ward was transferred to Santa Barbara, Chi-
huahua, and in 1911 he became surgeon-in-chief
of all the company's interests in Mexico. Though
a citizen of the United States, he was appointed
municipal health officer of Santa Barbara, a po-
sition in which he achieved a wide reputation
despite drastic measures foreign to Mexican ex-
perience. He inaugurated a local vaccination
campaign which practically stamped out small-
pox where it had formerly been regarded as so
inevitable that children were purposely exposed
in order to insure a milder attack. So successful
was this campaign that Husk's authority in sani-
tary matters was unquestioned thereafter. Ty-
phus fever, locally called tabardillo, is endemic
throughout Mexico. In 1915, however, its in-
cidence had assumed epidemic proportions and
it became a public-health problem for the world
at large. Among other agencies, Mount Sinai
Hospital of New York organized a commission,
headed by Dr. Peter Olitsky, for the investiga-
tion of the disease in Mexico and enlisted Husk's
services in their work. A hospital was established
at Matehuala, San Luis Potosi, in the center of
the affected zone. Though the method of trans-
mission of typhus by lice had been previously
well established, the specific cause of the disease
was stifl unknown. While studies of the bate-
teriology and serology of the disease were being
carried on, a sanitary campaign against the in-
sect carrier was vigorously prosecuted. This was
the mission assigned to Husk and be pursued it
with his usual judgment and vigor. In addition,
an effort at prophylaxis by an anti-typhus vac-
cine was being employed In the midst of this
work Husk contracted the disease He died ia
a hospital at Laredo, Tex,, thas adding another
name to the list of martyrs to medical progress,
of whom typhus has exacted mot* than its share.
Husk was a man of mexhattsttble enthusiasm
and energy. To good jadgmetit he added *
never-failing fund of good natttre, an Weal cop*-
bination in erne who was dealing with a

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