The triumph of American medicine in the construction of the Panama Canal.

  • James Ewing Mears
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The triumph of American medicine in the construction of the Panama Canal. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    progressive methods which the advanced state of medical science confers. It may be urged that it requires military discipline to achieve such results as we observe in the Canal Zone. Recognizing. aS we all must, the influence exerted by a state of military ccatrol in conquering unsanitary conditions, and in obtaining unresisting compUance with those which are conducive, in all respects, to the conservation of health which may be permanently maintained, we find some examples of places presenting conditions similar to those which had existed in the Canal Zone, and which have been completely removed by civic efforts. In a visit made in the last winter to South America, I landed in Santos, Brazil, a city of 41,000 population, and one of the best ports on the Atlantic Ocean. A few years ago this port was devastated by raging epidemics of yellow fever. To such extent did the disease prevail that vessels coming into the port lost in several instances, and very quickly, their entire crews from the disease, ofl&cers and men, before they could be unloaded. I was told of one instance in which a vessel lay anchored in the harbor for a period of eighteen months, unloaded, with cargo perishing in the hold. Inspired by the fact that this city was the greatest shipping port of coffee in the world, the government and municipal author- ities inaugurated a system of modern hygienic improvements which destroyed the breeding places of the stegomyia mosquito, and banished yellow fever, converting its beautiful harbor from a home of pestilence into an attractive seaside home, with the ships of many nations unloading and loading in guaranteed security alongside of its commodious and well arranged quays. Such results had been obtained by civic effort, and they may be accomplished in other places where knowledge of sanitary science, combined with intelligent cooperation—^freed from the
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