BANISHING THE PLAGUES 



been the metamorphosis effected by Col. W. C. 

 Gorgas, U. S. A., the Chief Sanitary Officer, and" his 

 associates. 



An outline of the work accomplished is given in an 

 interesting article in a recent issue of the Medical 

 Record, by Dr. J. Ewing Hears, of Philadelphia. He 

 points out that the Isthmus has been known since the 

 discovery of America as one of the most unhealthful 

 regions of the globe; virtually uninabitable to any 

 but the few natives, who themselves fell victims in 

 great numbers to the deadly scourges of malaria and 

 yellow fever. 



When an attempt was made in 1849 to construct a 

 railway across the Isthmus, so many laborers per- 

 ished from disease that it became a proverbial say- 

 ing that every railway tie represented the dead body 

 of a workman. 



Trig project of the Isthmian Canal prosecuted by the 

 French from 1881 to 1892 may be described as a hope- 

 less contest waged against disease. "In five years the 

 French lost eleven-sixteenths of their working force, 

 one-third of the number French subjects. Out of the 

 twenty-four Sisters of Chanty engaged in nursing in 

 the Ancon Hospital, twenty died of yellow fever. Of 

 seventeen engineers who came on one steamer, six- 

 teen died." Little wonder that the French gave up 

 the fight. 



When Colonel Gorgas took charge of the sanitary 

 policing of the Canal Zone in 1904, the conditions had 

 not greatly changed. But within a single year he had 

 so transformed them as virtually to have banished 

 yellow fever, no single case of which has occurred 



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