FIGHTING THE INSECTS 



This is all very interesting and has much historical value. 

 W. C. Gorgas, who was then a major in the Medical Corps, 

 was put in charge of the clean-up of Havana on the basis of 

 the just proved carriage of yellow fever by mosquitoes. 



Shortly after this the United States began the construction of 

 the Panama Canal. The principal sanitarians of the country, 

 remembering the disastrous ending of the effort made by the 

 French under de Lesseps to construct a canal there, were greatly 

 exercised over the sanitary aspects of the problem, and just at 

 the time when the Panama Canal Commission was authorized 

 by Congress, a committee of medical men went before President 

 Roosevelt to urge the appointment of a thoroughly competent 

 sanitarian as a member of the Commission. I shall tell in another 

 chapter the story of this interesting interview. The world knows 

 that Colonel Gorgas, fresh from his clean-up of Havana, was 

 given full charge of the sanitary work in Panama. 



Before he started for the Isthmus, Colonel Gorgas called at 

 my office, and brought with him Mr. J. A. Le Prince, an engineer 

 who had been with him in his Havana work, and we talked 

 at some length of mosquitoes and mosquito remedies. I was 

 then planning the Carnegie monograph, and asked Colonel 

 Gorgas if he would have some one collect for me all the different 

 species that could be found down there. He smilingly replied, 

 "I'll have to turn that over to Mr. Le Prince." And Le Prince, 

 with an amiable grin said, "Well, Doctor, I'll have to do it 

 right away, because in a few weeks there won't be any mosqui- 

 toes left." I tell this as indicative of the confidence with which 

 the two men went to work. In a book published some years later 

 by Mr. Le Prince and Dr. Orenstein I tell this story in the 

 introductory note that I wrote for the volume, at their request. 



In the late spring of 1901 I was invited to give the popular 

 lecture before the Royal Society of Canada, and my subject 



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