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English: William M. Compton, M.D., was a Confederate Army surgeon, physician, and Superintendent of the Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum (1870-1876).

Prior to the Civil War he was involved in Whig politics in Holly Springs, Mississippi. After the Civil War, he was a vocal opponent of African-American civil rights as a Conservative delegate during the 1868 Mississippi State Constitution Convention, and was censured by the body for obstructing proceedings. Compton was also the "Grand Cyclops" of the Ku Klux Klan in Marshall County, Mississippi.

Despite this record, Compton left conservative politics and supported Jame L. Alcorn's faction of the Republican party in 1870. He was appointed Superintendent of the Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum after Alcorn was elected governor. He edited a pro-Alcorn paper from the asylum and was implicated and acquitted of sexual misconduct with nurses. Compton believed the scandals were instigated by his former allies within the Conservative/Democratic party. Weary of politics, Compton focused on reforming the asylum and modernizing the state's medical profession.

Recognized as one of the state's preeminent doctors, Compton retained his position at the asylum for a year after Democrats regained control of the state in 1876. Eventually all Republicans and their allies were purged from office, and by 1878 Compton was removed from his superintendency. Compton planned on opening a private mental hospital near Marshall County or in Memphis, Tennessee.

In 1878, a Yellow Fever epidemic reached Senatobia, Mississippi, and the town's panicked residents fled. When some of the refugees traveled to Holly Springs, many doctors thought the town's relatively high elevation would protect it from infected miasmic air. Compton disagreed—his experience with camp diseases in the Army and his knowledge of cutting-edge medical theory taught him Yellow Fever was spread person to person through some other means (mosquitoes were identified as the culprit in 1900). He urged Holly Springs's leaders to force the refugees to camp outside city limits, but they ignored his suggestion and let the refugees into the city. Knowing that the epidemic would soon spread to the city's residents, Compton sent his wife and three children away to safety while he and his mother remained to care for the sick.

The Yellow Fever epidemic subsided when the first frosts arrived and reduced the number of mosquitoes. Compton and his mother were among the last people to contract the disease. Dr. Compton was the last person to die of Yellow Fever during the epidemic. He is buried in Holly Springs.