Product Description
Originally published in the Encyclopedia Americana in 1919, just five years after the Panama Canal opened, this Kindle edition, equivalent in length to a physical book of approximately 20 pages, tells the story of the building of the Panama Canal.
Sample passage:
Meanwhile preparatory work proceeded upon the canal cuttings but during the summer of 1905 the work of excavation was virtually suspended. The mortality had proved alarming and Governor Magoon diverted most of the labor to sanitary work. Attention was devoted to the draining and oiling of marshes for the destruction of mosquitoes propagating malaria and yellow fever, to the sewerage systems of the Isthmus, and to a good water supply for the cities of Panama and Colón with the result that the mortality from yellow fever was soon completely reduced.
The housing, provisioning and entertainment of the laborers in the Zone were also arranged. Colonel William C. Gorgas of the Medical Department of the Army began the remarkable work of sanitation, without which it is doubtful if the canal could ever have been completed, certainly not without an appalling loss of human life. General Gorgas’s interesting book, “Sanitation in Panama,” contains the best account of the admirable achievements in this department. We have no means of telling (General Gorgas says, in effect) what was the sick rate of the French during the period of construction under the old French company, from 1881 to 1889, but we know that it was very large. We can safely calculate that their constant sick rate was at least 333 per 1,000, or one-third their force.
About the author:
John B. McDonnell was a staff editor for the Encyclopedia Americana and the coauthor of “Starved Rock Through the Centuries.”
Sample passage:
Meanwhile preparatory work proceeded upon the canal cuttings but during the summer of 1905 the work of excavation was virtually suspended. The mortality had proved alarming and Governor Magoon diverted most of the labor to sanitary work. Attention was devoted to the draining and oiling of marshes for the destruction of mosquitoes propagating malaria and yellow fever, to the sewerage systems of the Isthmus, and to a good water supply for the cities of Panama and Colón with the result that the mortality from yellow fever was soon completely reduced.
The housing, provisioning and entertainment of the laborers in the Zone were also arranged. Colonel William C. Gorgas of the Medical Department of the Army began the remarkable work of sanitation, without which it is doubtful if the canal could ever have been completed, certainly not without an appalling loss of human life. General Gorgas’s interesting book, “Sanitation in Panama,” contains the best account of the admirable achievements in this department. We have no means of telling (General Gorgas says, in effect) what was the sick rate of the French during the period of construction under the old French company, from 1881 to 1889, but we know that it was very large. We can safely calculate that their constant sick rate was at least 333 per 1,000, or one-third their force.
About the author:
John B. McDonnell was a staff editor for the Encyclopedia Americana and the coauthor of “Starved Rock Through the Centuries.”
