Sanitization of the Canal Zone
The sanitization of the Canal Zone and the cities of Colon and Panama is one of the most interesting features of the history of the Panama Canal. The want of proper sanitation was, no doubt, very largely the cause of the French failure.
The French authorities, either not understanding the significance of maintaining the health of the great mass of employees engaged in their work, or being criminally negligent of the lives and the health of their employees, failed to take the necessary measures for the protection of life and health. Their laborers were allowed to live in a haphazard way. The negroes were permitted to furnish their own food and to sleep where they pleased.
The consequence was that the ignorant and the improvident ate food that was not properly prepared, and slept very often in tents or on the ground, subject to the night dews and miasmatic vapors of the tropics. Diseases of the most virulent nature broke out in every camp, and yellow fever became especially active in carrying off its victims.
THE EFFECT OF A BLAST ALONG THE CULEBRA CUT.
Upper Picture—Before; Lower—After a Blast.
So with this dreadful experience as an example and a warning, the American authorities realized that the first work of importance was that of subduing the unhealthful conditions of the Canal Zone so that labor might be engaged in with reasonable safety by the tens of thousands of employees who would be placed upon the line of operations of the canal when work was actively commenced.
Fortunately, surgeons of the American army had gained a great deal of experience during the Cuban campaign, and one army surgeon had achieved particular prominence in his handling of tropical diseases. Dr. W. C. Gorgas, who had campaigned in Cuba and assisted General Leonard Wood in the cleaning up and sanitization of Santiago and Havana, was peculiarly fitted for the important work of establishing healthful conditions on the Zone.
Dr. Gorgas had also had the advantage of being a collaborator as well as a fellow officer of Dr. Reed in Cuba. Dr. Reed was one of the first army surgeons to become familiar with the theory that the yellow fever and the malarial fevers of the tropics were carried and distributed through the agency of mosquitoes. In fact, Dr. Reed himself became a victim to his desire for scientific knowledge, he having allowed himself to be bitten by a mosquito that had first filled itself with the virus of a yellow fever patient, and died as the result of the experiment.