HALL OF EMPLOYEES' CLUB, CULEBRA.
At this time there was but little yellow fever on the Isthmus, and, in spite of the arrival of a large number of non-immunes, no alarming outbreak occurred during the first ten months. During April, 1905, however, the administration building in Panama, in which worked some 300 non-immune employees of the Commission, became infected. In that month there were 9 cases and 2 deaths; in May, 33 cases and 8 deaths, of which 21 cases and 2 deaths were among employees of the Commission. In June there were 19 deaths from yellow fever on the Isthmus, and in July 13. The Commission reported[28] that:—
"A feeling of alarm, almost amounting to panic, spread among the Americans on the Isthmus. Many resigned their positions to return to the United States, while those who remained became possessed with a feeling of lethargy or fatalism, resulting from a conviction that no remedy existed for the peril. There was a disposition to partly ignore or openly condemn and abandon all preventive measures. The gravity of the crisis was apparent to all."
[28] Annual Report, 1905, p. 30.
Colonel Gorgas writes[29] of this time:—
"We could readily see that if the conditions as they existed in 1905 were to continue the Canal would never be finished."
And he adds that:—
"The Executive Board of the Commission itself, as late as June, 1905, stated that the sanitary work of the Isthmus had been a failure and recommended that the personnel be changed and other methods tried. But the Supreme Authorities ... gave us steady support, and by the following December yellow fever had disappeared from the Isthmus."