Colonel Bailey Kelly Ashford (September 18, 1873 – November 1, 1934)[1] was an American physician who had a military career in the United States Army, and afterward taught full-time at the School of Tropical Medicine in Puerto Rico, which he helped establish in San Juan.

[4][5] Commissioned lieutenant in the United States Army Medical Corps in November 1897,[2] Ashford accompanied the military expedition to Puerto Rico in 1898 during the Spanish–American War.

[8] Serving as the medical officer in the general military hospital in Ponce, Puerto Rico, in 1899 he was the first to describe and successfully treat North American hookworm.

From 1903 to 1904, together with his colleague Pedro Gutiérrez Igaravídez, he organized and conducted a parasite treatment and education campaign, which treated approximately 300,000 persons (one-third of the Puerto Rico population).

Through Ashford's professor, Charles Wardell Stiles, his work also led to the creation of a seminal campaign to fight hookworm in the American South that was funded by John D.

[9] After serving as a commander of the Army Medical Department's First Division during World War I, Colonel Ashford was assigned to San Juan.

[2] After a 30-year Army career as a military doctor, he assumed a full-time faculty position at the School, where he continued his interest in tropical medicine.

The University of Puerto Rico campus at Rio Piedras, the building of the Institute of Tropical Medicine (see drawings[13]) in Puerta de Tierra, San Juan, is one of the few examples of the Neo-Plateresque architectural style in the Island.