To Panama and back

by Henry T. Byford

The president of the congress, Dr. Julio Icaza, had no time to smile. In preparing for the social part of the program he did a prodigious amount of work that will never be appreciated by those who went to be entertained, and found it so easy. Early in the afternoon he arrived from Colón with our Western contingent. He and Señor Obarrio, the treasurer of the Republic of Panama, who had $25,000 to devote to the entertainment of the Medical Congress, had gone to receive as befitted the profession of Panama to receive, and the profession of the republic that had done so much for Panama to be received. The treasurer expressed the visitors through from Colón to Panama free of charge and I am sure that President Icaza gave them the South American pledge of hospitality; for, from first to last, he omitted no essential and neglected no individual. In the evening he invited Doctor Echeverría and me into the barroom and maintained the elevated dignity of his office, his congress and his country by toasting the United States over a bottle of champagne.

Champagne is the only appropriate drink for an international toast. It meets the requirements of courtly etiquette and social aristocracy. It has the favor and patronage of kings and connoisseurs, and is adopted and bruited by the nobility abroad and the capitalists at home. It is the royal nectar, the sparkling sip, the golden prod of pampered palates, the coveted badge of aping mediocrity, the ostentatious smack of upstart opulence. Therefore, let those who can afford aristocratic dissipation and affect the distinction of highborn headaches drink it and feel proud and pampered. But those who are less ambitious can find choicer bouquets in cheaper wines.

Among the fêted and dead-headed travelers I recognized Dr. N. Senn, Sr., Dr. Lucy Waite, Dr. and Mrs. D. R. Brower, and Drs. Jacob Frank, H. P. Newman, A. B. Hale and C. G. Wheeler, all of Chicago; Dr. Chas. W. Hughes of St. Louis; Dr. and Mrs. George W. Crile of Cleveland; Dr. Morrow of San Francisco; Dr. and Mrs. Palmer of Janesville, Wis.; Dr. and Mrs. Edgar P. Cooke of Mendota, Ill.; and Dr. and Mrs. Wilcox of Michigan City, Ind.

Things immediately became lively about the hotel corridor and barroom. A new world greeted the pilgrims from the wild West and frigid North, and they were pleased with it. Extremes and opposites met, and there was ebullition.

Colonel Gorgas, Captain Carter, Major La Garde and other U. S. officers and officials called at the hotel during the evening, and also spent considerable time during the days that followed in lounging around trying to make us feel at home and adding much to the goodfellowship of our visit. But none of these gentlemen drank promiscuous toasts. In fact, I soon learned that the American officers on duty, as well as the Panama physicians, drank but little if any liquor, thus proving the rule that “In Panama one should do as the Panamanians do,” by constituting exceptions. Since hard drinking and hard working are both considered to be injurious habits in the tropics, I wondered at the popularity of the barroom, and concluded that the hard drinkers compromised with their conscience by observing the tropical rules of health concerning hard working. The abstemiousness of the doctors was perhaps on the other hand due to the fact that they indulged in hard work. This abstemiousness was greatly to their credit, since from their irregular and strenuous modes of life, doctors, both in and out of the tropics, are apt to become addicted to the use of sedatives and stimulants. I have noticed with regret that in the United States the red nose and mottled cheek is occasionally seen among elderly physicians, indicating that many resorts had been had to the fancied comfort, the second-hand cheer and spurious stimulation of alcoholics. Statistics assert that three fourths of the French morphine users are physicians. A knowledge of the effects of evil does not always act as a preventive.

At 2 P. M. Tuesday we registered as members of the congress and at 4 P. M. attended a reception tendered us by Doctor Amador, president of the Republic of Panama, at the Palacio de Gobierno, the Panama White House, which is painted blue. The second or upper floor was occupied by him as a residence, and the lower floor by the treasury department of the state on one side and the soldier-police on the other. The palace was a rectangular, two-story corner one covering about fifty by seventy-five feet, built solidly against the adjoining buildings. The entrance led into a tiled patio or court of about twenty-five by thirty feet, at the rear end of which a broad stairway led up to the balcony. The balcony extended all around the court, and served as an outdoor hall or passageway to the rooms. There was no inner hall, but the rooms were connected by doors so that one could pass from one to the other, the same as is usually the case in palaces and art galleries. In fact, the building served both as palace and art gallery, for around the wall of the rectangular reception-room, hung high up near the ceiling in oval frames, were bust portraits in oil of all of the presidents and governors of Panama from about the year 1855 down to date, with their names and the dates of their terms of office printed under them. There were pictures of twenty-five presidents and thirteen governors, if my memory does not deceive me. The first president served about three months, the second one about thirteen, and the others from a few months to two years—only two or three of them longer than that. How they found so many great men in so small a country, willing to give up so short a time from their private business, and risk the lives of their friends in a tit-for-tat with the previous government is a matter of no small wonder. Some of them were patriots and some were politicians, or revolutionists. Revolution is the Spanish for election. In Spanish America the president holds office until the next revolution. If the revolution is unsuccessful he is elected for another term. The governors, of course, ruled longer than the presidents for they were appointed and supported by the Colombian government, which, in turn, was for a long time supported largely by Panama and de Lesseps. President Amador had previously served a term as governor, and probably would not have been selected as president had he not been a good governor. He was a survival of the fittest.

President and Mrs. Amador received us in a very gracious and informal manner, and as there were but few present each of us had an opportunity of conversing freely with them. All conversed with Mrs. Amador, but only two of us understood or made ourselves understood, for she did not understand and speak English as her husband did. However, she was lively and interesting for all that, and was such a good listener that she kept her guests talking English in their very best style, most of them supposing that they were making a favorable impression. She was a handsome woman of medium height and figure, and much younger and more vigorous looking than her husband, who began to practice medicine about fifty years ago and therefore must have been much older than he appeared. He was tall, slim and serious looking. He seemed delicate because slim and quiet, but I believe the slender and delicate looking men work and last better in the tropics than those who carry superfluous flesh which, notwithstanding the pride taken in it by its possessors, is a sign of physical deterioration. He had a dignified and what might be called a matter-of-fact bearing, with nothing suggestive of Spanish or French formality. His appearance was that of a cultured American of quiet temperament who was content to pass unnoticed in a crowd. He was cordial although undemonstrative in his treatment of us, and was anxious to do everything in his power to please us and, in fact, did everything he could except get up a revolution for our entertainment. This he utterly refused to do, although it could have been very easily managed—anybody could have started a revolution. But he was obstinate.

The modus operandi of a revolution was about as follows: Whenever a popular man in one of the outlying districts got tired of work he would throw down the ploughshare and say to his numerous friends, “Come, boys, let’s go and tell the president what to do next. If he doesn’t want to do it next, why we’ll do it. If those little blue-coats in the patio don’t tumble over to our side, we’ll knock them over, and run the government on business and patriotic principles, and put the idle money of the treasury in circulation.”

This was the spirit of revolutions in Panama, this democratic spirit that gave any one who had friends the opportunity at any time to serve them by becoming their president. Every man had a right to be the president except the man who was. Instead of countenancing this spirit by starting new revolutions for Uncle Sam to quell, the president-doctor offered us the champagne of good-fellowship and the cigaret of peace. This is Uncle Sam’s kind of revolution. It is the new brand. The old kind is going out. U.S. is no longer a colonel or a judge; he is a peacemaker.

With U.S. out of the way, however, the Panamanians are great fighters. They are not a bit afraid of killing one another, and the man who is afraid of death and bombs had better not run counter to them when they are out for political sport. But if we (U. S.) carry out our peculiar ideas in Panama and establish permanent peace there, what will become of the warriors and the warlike nation? Will they, and it, not become extinct through change of environment? Will not peace kill more in the end than war? When Panama has become U.S.-ified will not the Panamanians become ossified and inert, and those of U. S. who take their places debilitate and degenerate from digging in canal dirt? Are there not blights as well as blessings of peace? Can the Anglo-Saxons permanently conquer the tropics? Not until they grow black in the face.