WORK IN PANAMA 431 
the covers would not have to be taken off in drawing water. Upon first inspec- 
tion, in March, four thousand breeding-places were reported in Panama alone. 
At the end of October less than four hundred receptacles containing larve 
were recorded ; this gives one a fair idea of the reduction in the number of mos- 
quitoes in the city. These operations were directed primarily against the yellow- 
fever mosquito, and involved the other species that inhabit rain-water barrels. 
Against the Anopheles in the suburbs the same kind of work was done which was 
done in Havana, with excellent results. 
The same operations were carried on in the villages between Panama and 
Colon. There are some twenty of these villages of from five hundred to three 
thousand inhabitants each. The result of the whole work has been the elimina- 
tion of yellow fever, and the very great reduction of malaria. The remarkable 
character of these results can only be judged accurately by comparative methods. 
It is well known that during the French occupation there was an enormous 
mortality among the European employees and that this was a vital factor in the 
failure of the work. Exact losses can not be estimated, since the work was done 
under seventeen different contractors. These contractors were charged one 
dollar a day for every sick man taken care of in the hospital of the Canal Com- 
pany. Therefore it often happened that when a man became sick his employer 
discharged him to avoid the expense of hospital charges. There was no police 
patrol of the territory and many of these men died along the line. Colonel 
Gorgas has stated that the English consul who was at the Isthmus during the 
period of the French construction was inclined to think that more deaths of 
employees occurred outside of the hospital than in it. A great many were found 
to have died along the roadside while endeavoring to reach the city of Panama. 
The old superintendent of the French hospital stated that in one day three of 
the medical staff died from yellow fever, and in the same month nine of the 
medical staff. Thirty-six Catholic sisters were brought over as female nurses, 
and twenty-four died of yellow fever. On one vessel eighteen young French 
engineers came over, and in a month after their arrival all but one had died. 
With the mosquito relation well understood, not a single case of yellow fever 
was contracted during the first two years under Doctor Gorgas, although there 
were constantly one or more yellow-fever cases in the hospital, and although 
the nurses and doctors were all non-immunes. The nurses never seemed to 
consider that they were running any risk in attending yellow-fever cases night 
and day in screened wards, and the wives and families of officers connected with 
the hospital lived about the grounds knowing that yellow fever was constantly 
being brought into the grounds and treated in nearby buildings. Americans, 
sick from any cause, had no fear of being treated in the bed immediately ad- 
joining that of a yellow-fever patient. Colonel Gorgas and Doctor Carter lived 
in the old ward used by the French for their officers, and Colonel Gorgas thinks 
it safe to say that more men had died from yellow fever in that building than in 
any other building of the same capacity at present standing. He and Doctor 
Carter had their wives and children with them, which would formerly have been 
considered the height of recklessness, but they looked upon themselves, under 
