Page:Panama-past-present-Bishop.djvu/180

160 passengers were kept in a screened house, where no local mosquitos could get at them, until long after the time required for the development and discovery of any possible fever-case among them. Without sick people to bite, the mosquitos could get no germs to carry, and, contrariwise, without the Stegomyia mosquito, the germs could not be carried from one person to another. Dr. Gorgas and his little army attacked the enemy from both directions at once.

The two great strongholds of the disease were the cities of Panama and Colon. Here the sanitary control which we had obtained by treaty-right was greatly helped by the fortunate fact that the first President of the Republic of Panama was Dr. Manuel Amador Guerrero, a well-trained physician and an authority on tropical diseases. At his suggestion, native doctors were appointed sanitary inspectors, and they did their work far more tactfully and with less friction than American inspectors could possibly have done, among a Spanish-speaking population, virtually all of whom were immune to yellow fever and had no idea of sanitation. They submitted with the greatest good-nature to having their houses entered and searched for yellow-fever patients, and during the worst of the epidemic, every house in Panama City was visited every day. As soon as a new case was discovered, the sick man was carried to the hospital in a screened ambulance, and his house and those of his neighbors were tightly sealed up with strips of paper and fumigated with sulphur, after which the dead mosquitoes were carefully swept up and burned. Then detective work would begin in two different directions: watching