physician Col. William Gorgas, who led the efforts that eradicated yellow fever in H avana. G orgas was appointed chief sanitation officer of the C anal in 1904 and began the effort to control the mosquitoes in the Canal Zone, which was acquired by the United Stares that sam e year. To eliminate mostly night-biting mosquiroes Col. William Gorgas from homes, his sanitation department encouraged architectu ral designs that m aximized ventilation ye t minimized unscreened entries; installed, inspected, and repaired window and door screens; and sealed cracks in buildings. Sanitation efforts targeted mosquito breeding grounds by draining swamps, digging and paving drainage ditches, removing open water containers, and covering ponds and other standing bodies of water with oil to suffocate rhe larvae. Larger bodies of water were covered with larvicide to kill the larvae. The sanitation department also improved the sewer system's partially exposed underground channels, paved roads, and im plemented a system fo r collecting "night soil."
Health Care In addition to public health p rojects, the Americans sought to upgrade the medical care available to sick and injured wo rkers. During the American construction era, about for ty hospitals of five to fi fteen beds each-called rest camps-housed the sick until they could be m oved to a district hospital (twen ty to one hundred beds each). Quinine was bought by the ton for Canal Zone dispensaries and hospitals. In 1908 each employee was advised to rake three grains daily (there are 437.5 grai ns in an ounce). O ne laborer wro te "malaria fever have [sic] m e so bad I had to drin k plenty quine [sic] to nic tell [sic] I heard singing in my ears ... going to quits drinking quine [ ... ] was getting me deaf." 1
The medical care was no r with out its drawbacks, however. Care was segregated , with "colored" wards in hospitals usually located in rhe worst par ts of these buildings and lacking isolatio n units, thereby increasing rhe risk of hospital-acquired infection. Indeed, the toll disease took o n non-white workers was m any times higher than o n whites . In addition , no n-white workers we re often h oused in crowded rent encampments rhar were impossible to screen off as effectively as the ho uses in which white workers lived. Still, the Panam a Can al construction proj ect stands as a milestone in the history of public health -as important, in its way, as the engineering achievemen t of building the Canal itsel(
NOTES 1 Weeks, C. M. p. l (1963) In R. C. Sruhl (ed.) Isthmian H istorical Application ofLarvicide (mosquito oil) by use ofknapsack sprayer, Miraflores, Canal Zone, Panama, June 19 10.
The construction effort itself often added to the problem . Excavation and the constant m oving of h eavy equipment left depressions that filled with rain, constantly creating more ideal breeding beds for mosquitoes. Ar o ne point, depositing silt in a sm all lake provided abundant nutri ents to create a swarm of Anopheles (malarial) mosquitoes in an area that had previously hosted a relatively small population. H ealth appropriations du ring the decade of consrrucrionincluding sanitation, hospitals, medical attendance, and other activities-totaled $20 millio n, bur rhe results we re spectacularly successful. After 1906, no mo re cases of yellow fever were reported, and cases of malaria, while never disappearing, also declined significantly.
SEA HISTORY 148, AUTUMN2014
Society competition for the best true stories of life and work on the Isthmus of Panama during the construction of the Panama Canal. Retrieved from http: //dloc.com /AA00016037/00109 . Nancy Schaefer is a reference and instruction librarian at the University ofFlorida in the H ealth Science Center Library. Nina StoyanRosenzweig is the archivist for the H ealth Science Center Libraries and historian for the University ofFlorida H ealth Science Center; she focuses on the study ofmedical history as well as medical humanities. Rolando Garcia-Milian is the basic biomedical sciences librarian at the University ofFlorida H ealth Science Center Library. This article was adapted from the chapter titled, "H ealth and Safety During Canal Construction" in 100 Years of the Panam a Canal: Celebrating the Centennial 19 14- 201 4 (http:l!bit. ly!PanCanalCentennial).
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