1919-20.] Obituary Notices. 189 
workmen be preserved ? As Gorgas said, the experience of the French 
and other predecessors proved that “ unless we could protect our force 
against yellow fever and malaria, we would be unable to accomplish the 
work ” of constructing the canal. 
The problem of the Panama Zone differed from that of Havana, in that 
the canal extended for some fifty miles from north to south, through 
country covered with swamps and tropical vegetation, and with two good- 
sized towns, Colon and Panama, at either end. Yellow fever was to be 
feared in the towns where the Stegomyia breeds, and malaria in the 
country districts where the Anopheles abounds. It took sixteen months 
to rid the Zone of yellow fever as against seven in Havana, and Gorgas 
points out that this was due to the strictness of military rule in Havana, 
and the absence of this at first in Panama. It was not until President 
Roosevelt peremptorily interfered, and sent Judge Magoon with arbitrary 
powers to help Gorgas, that real progress was made, and this was only done 
under pressure when yellow fever broke out in the administrative building 
at Panama, and the Americans in panic were leaving in large numbers. 
When Gorgas was given a free hand things began to move, and at one 
time an army of 4100 men was employed in the sanitary department. 
Four hundred men were employed in Panama alone in fumigating the 
houses, which were done three times, 200,000 pounds of pyrethrum powder 
and 400,000 pounds of sulphur being used. The entire surface of the 
ground was paved or cemented, the houses were screened and properly 
drained, a constant water-supply was instituted, and no cisterns were 
allowed. So strict were the rules that even water-jugs were prohibited, 
all water being drawn direct from the tap. In a few months yellow fever 
disappeared, and has not since made its appearance in the Zone. 
In the same energetic way the malaria problem of the intervening 
country was tackled. Swamps were drained, ditches lined with cement, 
underground tile drains laid, water that could not be removed was oiled, 
houses were screened, and the population treated with quinine. In this 
way Gorgas converted the “ white man’s grave,” as Panama has been 
called, into one of the healthiest parts of the world, where the death-rate 
from all causes was about 10 per 1000 in 1908. 
As Gorgas himself says, “ I think the sanitarian can now show that 
any population coming into the tropics can protect itself against those two 
diseases [malaria and yellow fever] by measures that are both simple and 
inexpensive; that with these two diseases eliminated, life in the tropics 
for the Anglo-Saxon will be more healthful than in the temperate zones ; 
that gradually within the next two or three centuries tropical countries, 
