Panama 201 



to suppose that the same thing happened with Rome. 

 Whether it reached America with Columbus or not seems 

 very doubtful. I am not a medical historian, but it is quite 

 obvious that Cortez, equipped as he was and with the 

 number of followers that he had, could never have marched 

 from Mexico City to where Trujillo in Honduras is now, 

 if malaria had stalked abroad in the land. No disease in the 

 entire world causes so much suffering and incapacity as 

 does this one; and for the untold number with whom qui- 

 nine does not agree, the use of this drug, either as a pro- 

 phylactic or as a curative agent, means suffering almost as 

 bad as that of the disease. 



One dreads the temptation which some day is going to 

 come to many people to motor over the Pan-American 

 Highway when it is completed. They little realize the 

 misery which will be theirs from carelessness or lack of 

 knowledge in warding off this disease. It can be done, but 

 it cannot be done easily. 



Probably the fault is entirely mine, but the published 

 reasons that moved the Peabody Museum to excavate at 

 the Sitio Conte in Code, Panama, are not correctly set 

 forth in the Memoirs describing the finds. The matter is 

 not important, but it illustrates in a peculiar degree how 

 chance governs all sorts of things besides our digestion. My 

 wife and I were in Panama in August 1928. We were 

 house guests of Meriwether and Edith Walker. I re- 

 member the question of shopping came up one morning at 

 the breakfast table, and I said to Rosamond and Edith 

 that I hoped they would stay out of shops in the con- 

 gested center of Panama City — because there was an 



