MIRACLES OF SCIENCE 



one-sixth of the entire command." There is every 

 prospect that all this will now be changed. Typhoid 

 fever, thanks to the new knowledge of sanitation, com- 

 bined with the use of the preventive vaccine, will be 

 as thoroughly subject to scientific control as small- 

 pox has been since the original vaccine demonstration 

 of Jenner. 



AN INSPIRING OBJECT LESSON 



The report of the Department of Sanitation of the 

 Isthmian Canal Commission for 1912 shows that 

 the extraordinary work of making a once pestilential 

 region salubrious has been carried one stage farther 

 by Colonel Gorgas and his associates, the death rate 

 among employes being lower than ever before. It ap- 

 pears that in 1906 the death rate among employes 

 was 41.73 per thousand, and in 1907 28.74 per thou- 

 sand, whereas in 1911, it was 11.02, and in 1912 only 

 9.18 per thousand. The death rate among white em- 

 ployes was only 3.25 per thousand, and the death rate 

 from disease in the army in the calendar year 1911, 

 was only 2.66 per thousand. 



As to specific diseases, we find that in 1907 there 

 were 98 deaths from typhoid fever, in 1912 only 4 

 deaths from this disease. Pneumonia claimed 328 

 victims in 1907, and only 57 in 1912; and malaria, 

 which caused 233 deaths in 1906, caused only 20 in 

 1912. 



Considering the death rate of the total population 

 including the cities of Panama, Colon, and the Canal 

 Zone, the statistics show an equally striking better- 

 ment in recent years. The death rate per thousand 



252 



