ANCON HOSPITAL AS RECEIVED FROM THE FRENCH
It does seem a ridiculous amount of fuss about a mosquito, doesn’t it? But since that sort of thing has been done on the Zone death carts no longer make their dismal rounds for the night’s quota of the dead, and the ravages of malaria are no longer so general or so deadly as they were.
Nowadays there are no cases of yellow fever developing on the Zone, but in the earlier days when one did occur the sanitary officials set out to find the cause of infection. When the French seek to detect a criminal they follow the maxim “Cherchez la femme” (Look for the woman). When pursuing the yellow-fever germ to its source the Panama inspectors look for the stegomyia mosquito that bit the victim—which is a little reminiscent of hunting for a needle in a haystack.
A drunken man picked up on the street in Panama was taken to the hospital and there died of yellow fever. He was a stranger but his hotel was looked up and proved to be a native house occupied only by immunes, so that he could not have been infected there. Nobody seemed to care particularly about the deceased, who was buried as speedily as possible, but the Sanitary Department did care about the source of his malady. Looking up his haunts it was discovered that he was much seen in company with an Italian. Thereupon all the Italians in town were interrogated; one declared he had seen the dead man in company with the man who tended bar at the theater. This worthy citizen was sought out and was discovered hiding away in a secluded lodging sick with yellow fever. Whereupon the theater was promptly fumigated as the center of infection.
Clearing up and keeping clean the two centers of population was, however, the least of the work of sanitation. The whole Isthmus was a breeding place for the mosquitoes. Obviously every foot of it could not be drained clear of pools and rivulets, but the preventive campaign of the sanitation men covered scores of square miles adjacent to villages and the Canal bed, and was marvelously effective in reducing the number of mosquitoes. Away from the towns the campaign was chiefly against the malarial mosquito—the anophelinæ. The yellow fever mosquito, the stegomyia, is a town-bred insect coming from cisterns, water pitchers, tin cans, fountains in the parks, water-filled pans used to keep ants from the legs of furniture and the like. It is even said to breed in the holy-water fonts of the multitudinous churches of Panama, and the sanitary officials secured the co-operation of the church authorities in having those receptacles kept fresh. The malarial mosquito however breeds in streams, marshes and pools and will travel sometimes a mile and a half from his birth-place looking for trouble.
As you ride in a train across the Isthmus you will often see far from any human habitation a blackened barrel on a board crossing some little brook a few inches wide. If you have time to look carefully you will see that the edges of the gully through which the brook runs have been swept clear of grass by scythe or fire or both, and that the banks of the rivulet are blackened as though by a tar-brush while the water itself is covered by a black and greasy film.
Photo by Underwood & Underwood
THE CANAL COMMISSION HOSPITAL AT COLON BUILT BY THE FRENCH