Page:The National Geographic Magazine Vol 16 1905.djvu/619
ernor Magoon, under whose jurisdiction all this work has been so successfully accomplished, is arranging to raze many of the worst shacks and replace them with modern sanitary buildings. Within a year, it may confidently be predicted, Panama will be a city well watered, well sewered, well paved, and clean and healthful.
What has been done for Panama is being done for Colon and every important labor camp across the Isthmus. Work on Colon's water reservoir is well under way, and temporary measures are being employed to safeguard the city's health pending the report of a board appointed to recommend plans for permanent improvements. An abundant supply of pure water from mountain springs has been provided at Culebra and at other important labor centers along the line of the canal, and adequate drainage is being installed in them also.
Four thousand one hundred men are now employed in these sanitary undertakings. So effective has been the work that yellow fever has been virtually extirpated from the Isthmus. In June last there were 62 cases of yellow fever there; in July, 42; in August, 27; in September, 6, and in October, the worst month of the year for yellow fever, 3—no one of the latter among the employés and all originating many miles from the line of the canal. In regard to general health conditions, I was told, when on the Isthmus in October, that there were over a hundred less patients in Ancon Hospital than there had been for many months, although we had brought in 4,000 additional laborers during the previous two months, and it was from the new arrivals that the hospitals were usually recruited.
To fully understand what has been accomplished by our sanitary work, it is only necessary to compare the present rate of sickness with that which prevailed on the Isthmus when the French were in possession. In August, 1882, the second year of the French occupancy, with a force of 1,900 men, the death rate was 112 per 1,000. In August, 1905, with a force of 12,000 men, there were only eight deaths, or two-thirds of a man per 1,000.
If we have not, as our critics complain, made "the dirt fly," we have made the filth fly, and we have made yellow fever, that supreme terror of the tropics, fly so far from the Isthmus that it will never, let us hope, find its way back again.
We have established a hospital system which includes a large hospital at Colon and another at Ancon, and a number of smaller hospitals at convenient points along the line. The one at Colon is built on piers over the Atlantic Ocean, and patients there have at all times the benefit of cool and invigorating sea air. That at Ancon is one of the largest and best equipped in the world, situated on the hill above Panama and commanding a superb view of mountains and sea.
The management and service of the hospitals are on a par with the natural advantages and beauty of location. Colonel Gorgas, who is in direct charge of hospitals, has organized a staff of doctors and nurses for which it would be difficult to find a superior anywhere. Mr Isham Randolph, one of the members of the consulting board of engineers, who recently visited the Isthmus, said, in a letter published on his return: "The hospitals are a source of just pride to our people. If sickness could ever be regarded as a boon, it may be so thought of in Ancon and Colon." No less emphatic testimony comes from Mr D. M. Hazlett, who speaks from personal experience as a patient in Ancon Hospital. Writing in the Panama Mail, he says: "The medical staff and corps of trained nurses are beyond criticism. No expense has been spared in providing the various wards with all