Edward Ryan

Edward W. Ryan (December 14, 1883 – September 18, 1923) was an American physician and Red Cross official, who devoted most of his life to combating epidemics worldwide.
Ryan joined the Red Cross in 1913 to help soldiers and civilians wounded during the Mexican Revolution. There, in Mexico, he was imprisoned and sentenced to death, but was eventually released. He then continued his work for Red Cross in Europe. While heading the American Red Cross mission in Belgrade in 1914–1916, he successfully fought an outbreak of typhus that killed thousands. He later helped containing similar epidemics in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia in 1919–1922, and was awarded the Cross of Liberty in Estonia in 1920. In late 1922 he was sent to Iran, where he died of a heart disease in 1923.