296 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



the Isthmus is inseparably linked with disease and death. For more 

 than three hundred years it was the favorite highway from ocean to 

 ocean and many thousands perished en route from tropical disease. 



The Panama railroad is only forty-five miles long, but it took five 

 years to build it, and the cost in human life has never been satisfactorily 

 estimated. Two different times a thousand imported men all died 

 within one year. 



One of the most pathetic incidents in all the history of human effort 

 was the failure of the French, and the awful toll of death the French 

 people and the laborers paid for their ignorance of scientific sanitation, 

 which came later and is now universally accepted. Gorgas himself 

 says that the Americans could have done no better than the French 

 without the knowledge of the mosquito as a disease carrier. De Lesseps 

 stood at the very head of his class in his field, and he had the best engi- 

 neers of his time, and the brainiest supervisors; he had ample money 

 and the latest machinery; but death stood in the path of every effort, 

 defying progress. His annual death rate for the eight years was about 

 240 per thousand, and, after spending over $260,000,000 he met with 

 complete failure, a failure that glares like a death dragon from the old 

 discarded machinery and seems to breathe forth from the very silence 

 of many thousands of graves. Colon, with a population of ten thou- 

 sand, has a cemetery with one hundred and sixty-seven thousand graves. 



And this is the country from which yellow fever has been banished 

 for more than six years; where the mortality from typhoid fever and 

 dysentery has been reduced to the minimum; where malaria has be- 

 come mild and controllable ; the country where the deaths per thousand 

 among canal employees, instead of De Lesseps's 240, is only seven and 

 one half. It is almost unbelievable, but it is true. Among white Amer- 

 ican employees the death rate is less than three per thousand. The 

 lowest death rate of any considerable number of people in the world is 

 now found in the Canal Zone. 



How this has been done is the interesting question and therein lies 

 the great lesson. After a short-lived error which threatened a repeti- 

 tion of the French disaster the government wisely decided to improve 

 the sanitary conditions first, and not send workmen to the slaughter. 

 The unconquerable Gorgas with a good force of physicians, surgeons, 

 nurses, expert sanitarians, skilled engineers and helpers, with ample 

 supplies of disinfectants, were put in the lead. It was recognized that 

 Colon and Panama City must be made habitable the first thing. The 

 little city of Christobal was started by the side of Colon. Houses were 

 built well off the ground, arranged for good ventilation, provided with 

 scientific plumbing, and carefully screened so that the operatives might 

 be protected from mosquitoes during sleeping hours. Colon and Panama 

 City are in the Zone but do not belong to the United States govern- 



