Lazear lost their lives; though some permitted themselves to be bitten by infected mosquitos and so took the fever, while their comrades entered a little room as dark and airless as the Black Hole of Calcutta, and slept there for three weeks, between blankets taken from the beds where yellow-fever patients had died. These last suffered nothing worse than discomfort, and it was conclusively proved that yellow fever is carried by the bite of a single species of mosquito; the Stegomyia fasciata, and by nothing else. This discovery, which has been truly said to be worth more than the entire cost of the Spanish War, gave the doctors something tangible to fight. Reed and Carroll drew up a complete program for protecting patients and killing off the mosquitos, and by putting it vigorously into effect, freed Cuba from yellow fever within a year.
Among Major Reed's assistants in Havana was Dr. William C. Gorgas, who was made chief sanitary officer of the Canal Zone shortly after the Americans came to Panama. Here he was confronted with a problem almost exactly like that which he had already seen solved in Cuba. All that was required was the intelligent and vigorous application of the principles discovered by the sacrifice of Lazear and elaborated by Carroll and Reed. Unfortunately, Dr. Gorgas was badly handicapped at the start by the failure of the United States Government to supply him with the force and funds necessary to do this.
The natural result was an outbreak of yellow fever, in Panama, in the spring and summer of 1905. Thirty-five of the American employees died, and hundreds more
