The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-07-14

per month. and those British deaths were among the subjects of John Bull only.
 It is hard to get accurate statistics of just how many died under the French. We know that they had good hospitals and that the sick in them were well cared for. but the contractors had to pay Sl day for their men who were kept in the hospitals, and you can easily sec that the ordinary contractor would send no more than he had to. From the best information l can get I believe that the French lost ao,o00 laborers by death dur Ing the work of the first company on the canal and that would make a death rate per annum of about 25 per cent or more than 250 per 1000. I doubt if We could have done better if we had known no more of tropical diseases than they did"
 What Sanitation Did
 Under those conditions could we have built the canal, Colonel Gorgas?' I asked.
 Tt would have been very difficult to have gotten our white employees to come here. We had trouble to hold them dur ing the yellow fever time of 1905. You must also consider that the deaths among the French were very largely among white French employees. According to the records of their hospital here. they had more than 1000 yellow fever deaths dur ing nine years and those were mostly
 
 were many more deaths from yellow fever among the same class outside the has pitfalls.
 Now the French white employees aver aged only few over 100o, and this means that they lost four-hfths of their whole force in nine years or eleven-sx- 1 teenth in five years. During our first 1 five years tho number of our white force was on the average only a little more | than 5000. If we had lost at the same rate as the French we would have all ready buried more than 4O00 of those white men from yellow fever alone and according to the same calculation we should have had about 24.ooo white men | here in Panama to have kept our forces at work. If we had had that. many we | should have already buried over 5000 | from that disease"
 And what has been the actual loss?'
 "It was only 19"
 Have you any yellow fever now?" ] No, We have had no cases since 1906 l think that we may safely say that we have wiped 1t out of the isthmus as an epidemic for all time to come"
 How about malaria?'
 When we first came here we had on ! the average 500 cases in every 1000 of our employees. This has been reduced until now there are only about 175 per 1000 who are sent to the hospital during the year. I doubt whether the health of any working force all the world over is much better than ours"
 Tropics As the World of the Future
 Have you not proved that the white l man can live and work in the tropics quite as well as in the temperate zone?"
 Yes" replied Colonel Gorgas. That has been absolutely demonstrat ted. and believe 1t will have a great effect as to the world or the future. It would seem that the first man must have lived in the tropics and that that was his natural habitation. He was born an animal without clothes and at the start he must have had a warm climate. It was only when. the tropical diseases drove him away that he left that most beautiful part of old Mother Earth. Now that these diseases can be controlled, he will come back and within a few centuries in all probabil- ity the most civilized parts of the world will be the tropical zones. With a given amount of labor man can produce far more there than in the colder re- gions. He can live better and have more days to work. As il Is now the great CT part of the population of the cold lands Is idle for six months of the year It's inhabitants spend their time in fighting the cold"
 But will 1t not cost too much to make the fight against the diseases Can the ordinary man afford to live in mosquito-proof dwellings?" q think it would be very much cheaper than to heat his home in the cold lands of the far north," replied Colonel Gorgas All that you need here is a screen of woven wire about the outside of your house. You do not need a heating plant or fur or wool clothing. Indeed the difference of the cost Is altogether in favor of the trop- 1 ics and as the sanitation of the tropics