possible to destroy it completely, especially round the smaller construction camps in the jungle. But there is much less malaria in Panama than in most parts of the United States.
One of the greatest and least-known triumphs of Dr. Gorgas and his organization was keeping the Isthmus free from the bubonic plague, at a time when this terrible disease, the "Black Death" that swept through Europe in the fourteenth century, was raging in the other Pacific ports both north and south of Panama. There it was confined to the three original cases brought in by sea, all of which proved fatal. This disease is carried, not by mosquitos, but by fleas, that travel on the backs of rats. A reward of ten cents was promptly offered for every rat tail brought in, and the rat is now a very scarce animal in Panama.
Dr. Gorgas was promoted to the rank of colonel in the United States Army Medical Corps, and made a member of the Isthmian Canal Commission in 1907.[1] Though he has turned Panama from a pest-hole into a health resort, there is still no lack of work there for him and for those who will come after him, for only by constant vigilance and costly sanitation can large bodies of Northern white men be kept healthy in the tropics. Moreover, if yellow fever or any other dangerous disease were ever again allowed to break out there, after Panama has become one of the great highways of the world, the Canal might easily prove as great a curse to humanity as it promises to be a blessing, for then ships would carry the sickness all too swiftly to all parts of the earth.
- ↑ He was appointed Surgeon-General of the United States Army, January 16, 1914.
