294 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



THE LESSON OF CANAL ZONE SANITATION 



By J. S. LANKFORD, M.D. 



SAN ANTONIO, TEX. 



WE have learned two great lessons in the construction of the Pan- 

 ama Canal. One is that with money, modern machinery and 

 men who are healthy and happily situated there is hardly anything im- 

 possible in civil engineering and building. This matchless piece of 

 work now nearing completion testifies to the constructive genius of 

 man, and can not be studied at close range in all its colossal propor- 

 tions without exciting wonder and admiration. It is impossible to get 

 any adequate conception of its magnitude without personal investiga- 

 tion. The first impression is the unlimited audacity of man in ripping 

 open the mountains, draining marshes and lakes, penetrating the 

 jungles and impounding rushing rivers in an effort to throw two great 

 oceans together. It is the greatest assault ever made upon nature ; but 

 the white man, brushing aside all obstacles and scorning danger, will 

 soon have finished this greatest of all monuments of marching civiliza- 

 tion. It is impossible to escape a deep interest in the employees and 

 their environment; in the systematic and effectual supervision of the 

 material, the supplies and the work, and in the general progress that 

 has been made. The bigness of it all and its possibilities in changing 

 the commerce of the seas, the destiny of nations and the history of 

 peoples appeals to the imagination as well as to sober thought. 



But these things are soon lost sight of temporarily in the contem- 

 plation of the greater lesson which is as broad as the human family of 

 the present and of the future, for it touches human suffering and sor- 

 row, and human happiness — the lesson of sanitation and health. The 

 unhealthiest section of the globe, so acknowledged by all the world, 

 has been converted into the healthiest. Accurate and unbiased records 

 and reports have demonstrated this repeatedly and conclusively. The 

 land of the jungle where the mosquito sang her weird song of death un- 

 molested for four hundred years vying with the germs of dysentery, 

 typhoid fever and pneumonia in the destruction of human life; the 

 country where death with grim terror reigned as king, queen and 

 prime minister has yielded to modern methods of sanitation and has 

 become the home of health and happiness, a plain fact almost approach- 

 ing the miraculous. 



It is a mistake to think this has been done under military power. 

 It has been accomplished by the forceful and efficient efforts of a corps 



