Importance of the Campaign 317 



are American. Many people in the United States 

 regarded the project, if not with hostility, then with 

 indifference. The general mental attitude was 

 that of judgment reserved, but with an underlying 

 expectation that for one reason or another the 

 -Canal might not be completed. With several hun- 

 dred cases of yellow fever among the employees, 

 how long would the people of the United States 

 have countenanced the construction of the Canal 

 at such a price? We think that had the method 

 of yeUow fever transmission not been discovered 

 before 1904, and had it been impossible to eradi- 

 cate it from the Isthmus, the Panama Canal would 

 not be completed, as anticipated, in 1914. 



Nor should another phase be forgotten. The 

 work accomplished in Panama proved to the world 

 the possibility of eradicating yellow fever from 

 any locality where the work is properly conducted. 

 Colonel Gorgas expressed his opinion regarding 

 the eradication of yellow fever as follows : 



I look forward in the future to a time when yellow 

 fever will have entirely disappeared as a disease to 

 which mankind is subject, for I believe that when 

 the yellow fever parasite has once become extinct, 

 it can no more return than the dodo or any other 

 species of animal that has disappeared from the 

 earth. 



