298 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MOXTHLY 



■were well arranged ; prohibition was strictly enforced ; good dispensaries- 

 were established in convenient places; a hospital car was run with 

 every train for the ill or the injured ; medical and surgical service was 

 skilled and prompt, and the hospital attention was second to none. But 

 it was the one cent per day per man expended for the prevention of 

 disease that worked the miracle. 



It was a tremendous undertaking beset by human hardship and 

 hazard and surrounded by difficulties apparently insurmountable. But 

 the canal will soon be finished, and its construction has been made pos- 

 sible only by the intelligent application of our most recent knowledge 

 of sanitation. It will mark a distinct era in human civilization, an era 

 in which all else must and shall be subordinated to the prevention of 

 disease. And this will not be altogether humanitarianism, for a hu- 

 man life has its commercial value, a definite value worthy of consid- 

 eration. 



One of the first results of this remarkable sanitary crusade will be- 

 noticed in Central and South America. Idle money of several nations 

 is now restless and seeking investment; tropical peoples, depressed by 

 climate, and enervated by centuries of disease, have not kept pace with 

 the progress of the world, and opportunities for good dividends are 

 easily found; and capital will throw every protection around employees- 

 for selfish reasons. Great commercial, agricultural and industrial de- 

 velopment immediately follows new and important lines of transporta- 

 tion ; and, in addition to the enormous investments of the United States 

 government in the Zone, private capital will flow into the country in a 

 steady stream. No individual, corporation or nation can afford to ig- 

 nore this striking lesson in sanitation. The country will first be made 

 fit for habitation and then development will follow. This movement 

 will be far reaching, and will have its effect upon the history of Central 

 and South American republics. 



If this can be done in Panama, most unhealthy of all countries^ 

 what should we not accomplish in our own country, with so many 

 superior advantages? Shall we go on permitting hundreds of thou- 

 sands of people to die of preventable diseases like typhoid fever, ma- 

 laria and tuberculosis? The heavy mortality from these and other 

 diseases is highly discreditable to an enlightened people. It is a 

 lamentable fact that while this marvelous transformation was taking 

 place in the Canal Zone, poisoning patent-medicine makers and con- 

 scienceless food adulterators were spending money by tlie millions to 

 defeat the purpose of the people to establish a health bureau in TTash- 

 ington to prevent disease and promote the public health. Our national^ 

 state and municipal health officers, and our citizens, should study this 

 great lesson well and profit by it. Thorough instruction of our twenty 

 millions of school children on practical sanitation would result in re- 



I 



