Gore, Albert Augustus (1838–1901), surgeon-general, military historian, and author, was born 1 December 1838 in Limerick, eldest son of William Ringrose Gore, MD, and Mary Jeners Gore (née Wilson). Educated in Cork, Dublin, London, and Paris, he took the MD (then a primary degree) of the Queen's University of Ireland from QCC (1858) and became LRCSI (1860), proceeding FRCSI. He joined the army medical staff in the following year and was appointed assistant surgeon to the 16th Lancers. He volunteered for service in West Africa and was present on 10 December 1861 at the bombardment of the Timni town of Massougha on the Sierra Leone river, the attack on Madoukia (27 December), and the storming and taking of Rohea (28 December). His services, including his courageous action in bringing in a wounded officer, were commended. His management of a yellow fever epidemic in Sierra Leone (1868) was rewarded by promotion. As sanitary officer to the quartermaster-general's staff during the 2nd Ashanti war (1873–4), he was twice wounded. The British Medical Journal reported on 21 February 1874 (vol. i, p. 255) that having appeared before a medical board at Whitehall Yard – ‘suffering from scorbutic symptoms, affecting the lower limbs’ – he had proceeded to Ireland on sick leave. Subsequently Surgeon-major Gore published a series of articles, ‘Leaves from my diary during the Ashantee war’, in the BMJ, but paradoxically these offer a detailed account of the voyage from the Mersey to the Gold Coast in the RMS Volta, saying nothing of the war. This was covered separately in Gore's A medical history of our West African campaigns (1876).
After six years' service in various base hospitals, including a period in Dublin which provided material for a paper ‘Typhoid fever in the garrison of Dublin’ (BMJ, lxi (1876), 6–19), he was appointed PMO of the army of occupation in Egypt (1882). His historical bent prompted the composition of ‘Our first campaign in Egypt’ (Dublin Jn. Med. Sc., lxxxiv (1887), 177–90). Gore was posted next to India, and appointed PMO to the north-west district, Mhow division, in central India. Although he became interested in the reaction of young soldiers to residence in the Indian hills, the most frequent complaints hardly differed from those he would have dealt with at home – syphilis and gonorrhoea. He was PMO to the forces in India (1895–8), with responsibility for the medical arrangements of the Chitral (1896) and north-west frontier (1897) campaigns. His most important book was The story of our service under the crown (1879). His twenty articles in the Dublin Journal of Medical Science are listed by Hayes; he also contributed to other periodicals. He appears to have had a large experience of the management of typhoid fever, leaving records of 105 cases treated in Alexandria and fifteen in Suez. He avoided blood-letting, imposing instead a simple dietetic regime, adding supporting stimulants when judged necessary. He used external applications of biniodide of mercury ointment in the treatment of acute goitres.
Gore retired in 1898, was made a CB in 1899, and received a distinguished service pension. He settled at Whitchurch, Shropshire, where his son Dr W. R. Gore practised. Visitors to his home, Dodington Lodge, were impressed by the collection of curios he had accumulated during his travels. He died 10 March 1901. He married (1866) Rebecca, daughter of John White; they had two sons and two daughters.