Sanitation in Panama

by William Crawford Gorgas

When I returned from Egypt, I found the canal project still being delayed. Pending organization, I was sent to Paris, France, as the representative of the United States Army Medical Department to the Hygiene Congress which met in Paris in October, 1903. I was directed to get while there such sanitary information as might be obtained from the Paris offices of the French Panama Canal Company. Besides having a very agreeable and delightful stay, I collected a great deal of valuable data with regard to the sanitary conditions which had existed under the French at Panama.

Finally, in January, 1904, the Isthmian Canal Commission was organized by the President under the Spooner Act. The President was very strongly urged by the medical profession generally to make a medical man one of the commissioners. It was pointed out to him that sanitation at Panama was fully as important as engineering; that if our force suffered as much from disease as had the French fifteen years before we should have great difficulty in carrying through our project. His attention was invited to the fact that in this Commission of seven men, where the sanitary phase of the work to be controlled by them was just as important as the engineering phase, there were five engineers and not a single physician.

The American Medical Association took a most active part in urging this matter upon the attention of the President, and hundreds of telegrams came in to him on this subject from all parts of the country. The President was not convinced by these arguments as they were presented to him, and organized the Commission of seven members without putting a physician on it.

During the latter part of March, 1904, I was ordered to accompany the Commission to Panama as their sanitary adviser, and for the purpose of drawing up a scheme of sanitation whereby the force might be protected during the construction of the Canal. I requested that Medical Director John W. Ross, United States Navy, Major Louis A. La Garde, Surgeon, United States Army, and Major Cassius E. Gillette, Corps of Engineers, United States Army, be detailed to assist me.

We went to Panama with the Commission, and were absent on this trip about a month looking into conditions and examining the locality. After much study and careful consideration, we submitted a report which embodied the organization which we thought necessary to accomplish the desired ends. The report also gave detailed estimate of the cost of this organization.

The French Company still had possession, and their representatives were in charge when we made this visit. They treated us very hospitably, and we were their guests during our stay on the Isthmus. We were housed on the Atlantic side, in the building known as the De Lesseps Palace. There was, however, nothing palatial about this building. It was simply a good, comfortable, frame building, such as can be found on many of the well-to-do plantations in our southern states. De Lesseps is accused of having erected it at a cost of more than $100,000. As I afterwards came to be more familiar with the history of the French régime at Panama, I found that this was on a par with most of the other stories of French extravagance on the Isthmus, and had no more foundation in fact than many of the other tales that fill the books of a few of our American writers concerning the Canal, to the discredit of the French.

On one occasion we were invited across the Isthmus to dine with the Administrator who was in charge of the work. It is somewhat startling to an inhabitant of the United States to contemplate traveling from the Atlantic to the Pacific to keep a dinner engagement, but at Panama this was not unusual. We not only left the Atlantic in the afternoon and dined on the shores of the Pacific the same evening, but we returned from the Pacific and slept on the shores of the Atlantic that same night. I was familiar with the history of the house in which the French Director lived, where we dined that night. I could not help recalling the sad story of Monsieur Dingler, the great French Director, who first attempted canal construction on the Isthmus. In this house had died his wife, daughter and son-in-law, and scores of other French engineers of prominence. The French butler who waited on us at dinner that evening and presided over the servants who attended us, remained with the Americans in the same capacity during the whole period of construction on the Isthmus, and is still there as the majordomo of the Chairman of the Isthmian Canal Commission.

We spent a delightful evening, and returned to the “North Sea” after dinner, reaching Colon about one o’clock in the morning. An amusing incident of our stay on the Isthmus occurred on our return. One of the commissioners was sick, and for this reason did not attend the dinner. In my business of looking up sanitary matters at Colon I had come to know the Mayor of the town quite well. Much to my surprise I found him at this late hour of the night awaiting our return. He took me aside and told me in a whisper that the Commissioner whom we had left behind sick had appeared on the street most uproariously drunk, had fought the Colon police to a finish, and was at that moment in the Colon jail raising pandemonium. The Mayor said that he had endeavored in every way to keep the matter quiet and protect the honor of the American Commission, but that the Commissioner himself had been so noisy and pugnacious that he feared the matter had gotten pretty well noised about the town.

I was, of course, much chagrined at this account of the Commissioner’s conduct. I knew well his reputation in the United States, and knew that he had lived a perfectly correct life for fifty years, enjoying the respect and consideration of the community, and that at home he was known as a sober and abstemious gentleman as far as alcoholic drink was concerned.

I took the Chairman of the Commission aside and unfolded to him the astounding story which the Mayor had just confided to me. We got into a carriage with the Mayor and hurried to the jail. As we neared this building our worst fears were confirmed; pandemonium seemed let loose. We could hear our honored Commissioner swearing and shouting, to the great delight and amusement of the crowd outside. We hurried in to see what we could do with our friend. Upon being ushered into the room in which he was raising such an uproar, we found that it was not the Commissioner, but one of our clerks. He had developed delirium tremens as the result of too much French hospitality, and insisted that he was the Commissioner above mentioned. The Mayor was never quite convinced that this was not the case. The Commissioner rather rose in the estimation of the townspeople, as being a jolly good fellow, but the Mayor always thought that he had carried things a little too far for a man occupying such a dignified position.