National Geographic: Adventures - Panama Canal: The Mountain and the Mosquito Page #2

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Probably it would not be extreme to say

that there is no other place

that has as bad a reputation."

He has been in Panama for

more than 13 months

when John Stevens joins him.

For Dr. William Crawford Gorgas,

it has been a year of anguish.

At Ancon, he relates the toll -

in the past few months.

Hundreds of other lives claimed by

malaria, pneumonia, chronic dysentery,

and, even, Bubonic plague.

John Stevens knows that his canal

cannot be built without human labor.

Stevens has to act quickly.

He has come to build a canal

but must fix a disaster.

In Panama less than a week,

he knows what he must do.

It is a decision

that will shock everyone.

With undiminished energy

despite the heat and rain,

John Stevens spends seven grueling days

inspecting every inch of

the biggest excavation in human history.

The men expect Stevens to order them

to speed up their work

on the President's Big Ditch.

Instead, he commands them

to lay down their tools.

Hundreds of workers and technicians

are shipped home to America.

John Stevens tells them

that the Panama Canal is unfit

for further labor.

In Washington, the new President

waits anxiously for progress reports

from his new chief engineer.

But the news from Panama is stunning.

The project has been shut down!

"Regardless of the clamor

of criticism...

as long as I am in charge of

the work...

and I am confident that

if this policy is adhered to,

the future will

show its absolute wisdom."

Stevens understands that the canal's

fatal problem

is not the mountains, but the men.

Disease and fear sap their souls

before they raise a shovel.

Stevens turns to Dr. William Gorgas

for help.

Like the French before them,

the Americans live in morbid terror

of catching the disease

they call Yellow Eyes, Yellow Jack,

or The Great Scare.

A horrifying disease.

Delirium and death can follow within

eight hours of infection.

Yellow fever patients first complain

of crippling muscle pain.

As the aches intensify,

body temperature rises steeply.

The skin and eyes turn yellow,

thirst becomes unquenchable

and patients lose consciousness.

Spasms of black vomit

signal the final crisis.

Fewer than 50 percent of

patients survive.

Gorgas believes in a new theory

that explains the cause of

yellow fever - mosquitoes.

In 1901, scientists have discovered

that the Stegomyia mosquito carries

the yellow fever virus

from person to person.

In Panama, only Gorgas understands

the mosquito's deadly secret.

Dr. Gorgas finds that yellow fever

mosquitoes live in towns, not jungles.

To destroy them,

he will need to fumigate every puddle

and rain barrel on the Isthmus.

He envisions the largest, most costly

public sanitation campaign

the world has ever seen.

It is not a vision shared

by the canal bureaucracy.

For eighteen months,

officials scoff at the mosquito theory

and turn down all of Dr. Gorgas's

requests for funds and supplies.

But John Stevens listens.

Only a healthy work force can rescue

Teddy Roosevelt's dream.

He will withdraw his men

from the mountains,

and send them to war

against the mosquito.

But Stevens does not

ignore the other war he faces.

The battle against Panama's

impassable geography.

Somehow, he must find

a route beyond Culebra.

Through the jagged jungles

to the sea.

He studies the French plans

and realizes that

the millions of tons of dirt

and rock

must be not only excavated,

but removed entirely.

Simply piling the spoil

at the side of the cut

is an invitation to landslides

and disaster.

"Efficient transportation

is nearly always the key to success

in construction.

If dirt is to fly,

there must be a smooth and

uninterrupted movement of trains."

Stevens conceives a radical new plan

for disposing of the dirt.

He draws on his experience with

railways in the Rockies.

Instead of hauling men, in Panama,

the trains will be used

to cart the dirt away.

But to do it, the entire rail system

must be revamped to handle

such a heavy load -

exactly the kind of thing

Stevens does best.

"There is no element of

mystery involved.

The most important stage in any great

undertaking is the preparatory stage.

The digging is the least thing

of all."

While Stevens attacks

the Continental Divide,

Dr. Gorgas sends out

his own battalions.

Fumigation brigades burn sulfur,

clean up sewage, and seal windows.

"It would be impossible to fumigate

more extensively than we did... in 1905.

We had about 400 men

engaged in this work,

and they went over the whole town

three times,

fumigating every house in the town,

besides fumigating every block

each time a case of yellow fever

occurred in that block."

Screens are installed and water

barrels are covered.

Ditches where mosquitoes breed

are drained.

Quarantined clinics treat

and keep them in mandatory isolation.

Stylish, sleepless and impervious

to the heat,

Gorgas works around the clock.

He stretches Roosevelt's promise

of an unlimited budget

to the breaking point, importing

America's entire output for a year.

He orders $90,000 dollars

worth of copper screening

in a single shipment.

Nearly double his previous

yearly budget.

It is the largest

and most expensive - war

ever waged against

tropical disease.

Meanwhile, John Stevens

fights his own battle.

He dismisses the existing

rail line as

"two streaks of rust

and a right of way."

Using his legendary status

as a drawing card,

Stevens lures the best railroad men

in America to the Isthmus.

Within six months of his arrival,

he triples the work force to 24,000.

Stevens constructs the most durable

railway in history.

Double-sided tracks of the heaviest

rails on earth

allow the world's heaviest freight

cars to travel in both directions,

Track-shifting machinery moves huge

sections of rail line faster and easier.

A telegraph system, new bridges and

massive locomotive sheds take shape.

Stevens thinks big, and buys big.

He has decided that the French suffered

because their machinery was too small.

He will not repeat their mistake.

Every weapon in his arsenal

is enormous.

His coal-burning steam shovels weigh

Mechanical dinosaurs.

Three times larger than anything

used by the Parisians.

"Now I would like that

[French] plant

to a modern one as baby

carriages to automobiles.

This is no reflection of the French,

but I cannot conceive

how they did the work they did

with the plant they had."

But Stevens has learned another

lesson on the railroads.

That morale is more valuable

than machines.

And the best way to restore morale

is to keep workers clean and dry.

There are three diseases in Panama.

They are yellow fever, malaria,

and cold feet;

and the greatest of these

is cold feet.

The labor camps built

during the French regime

have tumbled into misery.

Unpaved streets are ankle-deep in mud.

Waste is emptied onto passerby

from second story windows.

Stevens wades in like

a Wild West sheriff.

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