March 9, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



383 



the sum of the misery and loss from ma- 

 laria? Who will compute how far the loss 

 in a yellow-fever epidemic would go to 

 make everything safe along practical, com- 

 mon-sense lines? Is it not a fact that the 

 expense of tardy work and the indirect and 

 direct commercial losses resulting from this 

 season's experience would easily have paid 

 for New Orleans's exemption? How long 

 are we to suffer these evils and pay the 

 enormous and wretched penalty before 

 people will rise and demand that this great 

 crusade shall have complete course? This 

 age is not the time to say that the work is 

 too great. Put one year's loss and the cost 

 of remedies, the country over, into the 

 crusade, and it will be a paying investment 

 financially, not to include other considera- 

 tions. But again, do it thoroughly, so that 

 you will not have to come back again in 

 another year, or in ten years, for more 

 money. Otherwise you have set back the 

 cause for years. Note the radical work 

 which the general government is doing in 

 Panama and which it considers as neces- 

 sary in every way before work is fully put 

 under way. We said a year ago that the 

 government could well spend a million dol- 

 lars to make the zone safe. That has been 

 spent already and results will justify the 

 outlay and many times as much more. 

 Chairman Shonts, of the Isthmian Commis- 

 sion, in an address last month, expressed 

 the well-grounded hope that yellow fever, 

 that supreme terror of the tropics, was ex- 

 tirpated—never to return again to Panama. 

 Can one conceive all that such a statement 

 means in relation to the cost and humanity 

 of this great work? 



Assistant Surgeon General Gorgas, in his 

 report dated ISTovember 9, 1905, just to 

 hand, reports that of the 22,000 employees 

 during October, of which 4,000 were non- 

 immunes, there was but one case of yellow 

 fever and no deaths. He pertinently con- 

 trasts conditions for the same month in the 



zone now and under the French regime 

 before the mosquito theory was known. 

 Then there were reported 21 deaths and 

 84 cases, and many of each were not re- 

 ported. Now he has care of one third more 

 non-immunes and there is only one case. 

 He maintains 'the results are solely and 

 entirely due to the sanitary measures put 

 in force.' He has an anopheles brigade 

 reporting thousands of feet of ditches dug 

 and cleared and other remedial work; and 

 a stegomyia brigade reporting and remedy- 

 ing tanks, cisterns, barrels and other breed- 

 ing places. To overcome the dangers from 

 these pests which get to wing, he has a 

 fumigating brigade, reporting houses fumi- 

 gated containing 12,000,000 cubic feet, 

 using 18,000 pounds of pyrethrum and 

 7,800 pounds of sulphur. Dr. Gorgas finds 

 a steady decrease in cases of yellow fever 

 under this work, while there is a steady 

 increase in the number of persons suscep- 

 tible. He considers the sanitary question 

 in Panama settled— that the largest neces- 

 sary force of laborers can work there with- 

 out suffering from yellow fever and that 

 'the general health can be kept as good as 

 if they were digging a canal in the healthy 

 part of Maryland.' Now all this you may 

 hear stated by others, but bear in mind it 

 is the practical side of mosquito extermina- 

 tion we are trying to emphasize, and this 

 is all practical and highly profitable in 

 every way and bears well to be repeated. 

 Also recognize that to some extent such 

 work is necessary in many communities in 

 the states and that it is just as profitable 

 here in a humanitarian view as a financial 

 proposition and in other aspects. 



No progressive man will object that the 

 general government is spending hundreds 

 of millions on good roads, on irrigation, on 

 river and harbor improvement; that the 

 Empire State votes 150 millions for good 

 roads and canals ; but when it is considered 

 that in some of these cases the benefit will 



