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INSECTS AND DISEASE 
THE BUILDING OF THE PANAMA CANAL 
A TRIUMPH OVER INSECT-BORNE DISEASE 
By far the most serious problem which confronted the United 
States Government in the attempt to cut a canal across the Isthmus 
of Panama was that of insect-borne disease. 
The Isthmus was first visited by Columbus on his third voyage 
in 1498. Permanent settlements were established shortly thereafter 
by Balboa, and the conquest of Peru, about 1530, by Pizarro made 
the Isthmus a center of unique commercial importance. The size 
and magnificence of the city of Old Panama, the point from which 
Pizarro sailed forth, which Drake half a century later reconnoitred 
from both its land and water sides, and the stronghold, which the 
buccaneer Morgan captured, sacked, and _ practically destroyed in 
1671, has been greatly exaggerated by the earlier chroniclers and by 
later but no less credulous historians. Yet it is certain that an enor- 
mous volume of travel and a vast quantity of gold and silver bullion 
passed across the Isthmus between Spain and her imperial colonies. 
The result of this constant influx of non-immunes in a region admi- 
rably adapted for the breeding of disease-carrying insects might have 
been anticipated. The Isthmus became “‘the foremost pest-hole’’ of 
the earth, “infamous for its fevers, and interesting only because of 
the variety of its malarial disorders and pestilences.”’ 
The failure of the attempt made by the French under de Lesseps 
to build an Isthmian Canal ‘ 1880-1888) was due to various causes but 
most of all, perhaps, to the ravages of insect-borne disease. Nothing 
was then known of the relation of mosquitoes to the transmission of 
malaria and yellow fever. The hospitals on the Isthmus were 
unscreened, and potted plants stood all about with water in their 
saucers, furnishing an ideal breeding-place for Aédes mosquitoes. 
Even the legs of the beds were stood in cups of water to prevent ants 
from climbing them. It is no wonder that, as General Gorgas esti- 
mates, the French lost about one-third of their white working force 
each year from yellow fever alone. 
When the United States undertook the work, the epoch-making 
discoveries of Reed and his associates had been established, and 
General Gorgas, fresh from his successful handling of the sanitation 
of Havana. was detailed as sanitary adviser to the Isthmian Canal 
Commission in 1904. It is difficult to believe to-day that the members 
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