The Panama Canal 



459 



SCOURING THE WORLD FOR 

 LABORERS 



Then the coasts of Africa were scoured 

 for able-bodied men, but even there after 

 a short time the promises of remunera- 

 tive prices for their services ceased to 

 draw men to the canal zone. I have 

 seen a ship come into the port of Colon 

 from the coast of Africa, where it had 

 been sent under a most liberal contract 

 on which it was expected to bring i ,500 

 or 2,000 men for the canal working 

 parties, with only o ne or two hundred 

 on board. It was estimated that their 

 passage money cost the canal company 

 in the neighborhood of $1,000 apiece, 

 and yet one-half of them were invalided 

 to the hospitals almost as soon as they 

 landed. Thus the enormous cost of the 

 voyage was the principal result of such 

 expeditions. 



PREVENTIVE SANITATION 



The climate was not so much the 

 cause of this awful havoc among the 

 laborers as the want of preventive sani- 

 tary measures. My experience, which 

 has covered portions of five or six years 

 in Isthmian waters, leads me to ap- 

 prove what has been reported by the 

 U. S. minister to Panana as given in 

 The National Geographic Maga- 

 zine of October, 1904. It will bear re- 

 peating here. He says : 



' ■ When the able sanitary corps, which 

 has charge of bettering the health con- 

 ditions in the Isthmus has carried out 

 its plans for the improvement of the 

 canal strip and the cities of Panama and 

 Colon, there is no reason why the 

 Isthmus should not be one of the health- 

 iest places in the world. . . . There 

 has been hardly a single instance of 

 serious illness among the considerable 

 number of young men employed here 

 in work connected with the canal, while 

 the percentage of sickness among the 

 larger group of laborers employed at 

 Culebra is not greater than among those 

 engaged in similar excavating work in 



the United States. Among the 400 ma- 

 rines located half way across the Isth- 

 mus, at Empire, there has not been a 

 single death from local diseases, while 

 the percentage of those in the hospital 

 is not larger than would be found at the 

 average post in the United States. ' ' 



THE SANITARY PRECAUTIONS TAKEN 

 BY THE U. S. NAVY 



As the sanitary condition of the Isth- 

 mus is in the hands of army and navy 

 officers, I want to make a statement 

 concerning what I consider a reflection 

 on these services made by a lecturer 

 before this representative body only a 

 few weeks ago. Lest we forget ! 



A distinguished medical gentleman 

 who recently lectured here stated that 

 neither in the curriculum of the U. S. 

 Naval Academy nor at West Point was 

 any attention paid to the subject of 

 physiology or hygiene, which accounted 

 in part for the great sacrifice of human 

 life which took place among our forces 

 during the Spanish- American war in 

 1898. While the statistics he gave are 

 based mainly on army records, he by 

 inference made them apply to the navy 

 as well. 



As far as the U. S. Navy is concerned, 

 his premises are wrong and his conclu- 

 sions are wrong. In the first place, there 

 is a chair of physiology and hygiene at 

 the Naval Academy (and one was later 

 established at West Point), which is 

 and has been occupied by distinguished 

 medical officers of the navy, and the 

 young men there undergoing instruction 

 are given a very good general knowledge 

 of physiology and hygiene — sufficient 

 at all events to enable them as execu- 

 tive officers of ships to understand at 

 least the questions which arise in the 

 practical parts of the profession. Each 

 ship in our navy carries one or two and 

 sometimes three medical officers, so the 

 sanitation of our ships is well provided 

 for. In fact, the success that has fol- 

 lowed the navy's efforts to stamp out 



