G.— ENGINEERING. 129 



not think Sir Ronald Ross has been recognised by our civil and other 

 engineering institutions as much as he should be for his wonderful work 

 in this connection. When the American Government undertook the 

 construction of the Panama Canal the success of this great scheme probably 

 owed more to the science of bacteriology than to civil engineering. The 

 only other great difficulty which might have prevented its ultimate 

 completion was the question of cost and the sliding in of its sides at the 

 Culebra cut, which resulted from the local geological formation. It is a 

 magnificent monument to the civil engineer nevertheless, and a great 

 credit to those who designed and carried it out, but the science of medicine 

 played as great a part, if not greater, than any other science in its 

 accomplishment. In, my own experience in the construction of the Port 

 of Para in Northern Brazil, I have been much helped by this branch of 

 science. While we did not entirely eliminate yellow fever from our staff, 

 we did reduce it to a small number of cases and had very few deaths. We 

 had also to fight yellow fever in Mexico and Colombia in connection with 

 civil engineering works and not without loss among our staffs. My firm 

 and the governments for which we worked owe their thanks to the help 

 of medical science in the widest sense. There are still some fields to 

 conquer in this connection, where we need the bacteriologist and medical 

 scientist to aid us. I refer, e.g., to Varugus disease which caused such 

 destruction of life in the building of the Central Railway of Peru many 

 years ago through the Varugus Valley which was named after the disease 

 which existed, and still exists, to the injury of man and the advancement 

 of civil engineering enterprise. I was in this valley in 1925, visiting the 

 results of a terrible engineering disaster due to unprecedented rains. Rain 

 had not fallen in that part of the Andes for thirty-five years, and when 

 it did so it washed down the mountain side and buried the railway for 

 miles, sweeping away bridges and diverting the river, and causing very 

 great damage. The Varugus disease was still there and its causation 

 unknown. Great care was taken to move away all the staff at night. This 

 precaution was based on the experience of the engineers in charge of the 

 work, and special measures were taken by the management under General 

 Cooper which were productive of good results, but I was informed by those 

 on the spot that they were still having trouble from the disease among 

 their men. 



The latest enemy for which the engineer wants the aid of the 

 parasitologist and scientific medicine is the disease called ' Bilharziasis,' 

 which is causing great trouble in Egypt and preventing the free movement 

 of that splendid worker, the fellah, to the upper reaches of the White and 

 Blue Niles to assist in the construction of the great dam and canal systems 

 which are now engaging the irrigation engineers. The life-history of its 

 mobile germ is being followed out, and we must all hope, from a humani- 

 tarian as well as an engineering point of view, for an early and successful 

 attack on this, I think, the latest enemy of the civil engineer and the 

 progress of his work. Black water fever on the west coast of South 

 Africa, sleeping sickness and the tsetse fly are three more cases where 

 the help of the sciences of medicine and bacteriology are in\'ited to assist 

 the pioneer engineer in parts of the world requiring transport facilities. 



The civil engineer has been the means of helping himself and his fellows 

 1930 K 



