Economic Loss to the People of the United States Through Insects That Carry Disease

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1909 edition. Excerpt: ...fever and the very great reduction of malarial fever. The remarkable character of these results can only be judged accurately by comparative methods. It is well known that during the French occupation there was an enormous mortality among the European employees, and this was a vital factor in the failure of the work. Exact losses can not be estimated, since the work was done under 17 different contractors. These contractors were charged $1 a day for every sick man to be taken care of in the hospital of the company. Therefore it often happened that when a man became sick his employer discharged him, so that he would not have to bear the expense of hospital charges. There was no police patrol of the territory and many of these men died along the line. Colonel Gorgas has stated that the English consul, who was at the Isthmus during the period of the French occupation, is inclined to think that more deaths of employees occurred out of the hospital than in it. A great many were found to have died along the roadside while endeavoring to find their way to the city of Panama. The old superintendent of the French hospital states that one day 3 of the medical staff died from yellow fever, and in the same month 9 of the medical staff. Thirty-six Roman Catholic sisters were brought over as nurses, and 24 died of yellow fever. On one vessel 18 young French engineers came over, and in a month after their arrival all but one died. Now that the relation of the mosquito to yellow fever is well understood, it was found during the first two years under Doctor Gorgas that, although there were constantly one or more yellow-fever cases in the hospital, and although the nurses and physicians were all nonimmunes, not a single case of yellow fever was contracted in that...