Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/302

298 were well arranged; prohibition was strictly enforced; good dispensaries were established in convenient places; a hospital car was run with every train for the ill or the injured; medical and surgical service was skilled and prompt, and the hospital attention was second to none. But it was the one cent per day per man expended for the prevention of disease that worked the miracle.

It was a tremendous undertaking beset by human hardship and hazard and surrounded by difficulties apparently insurmountable. But the canal will soon be finished, and its construction has been made possible only by the intelligent application of our most recent knowledge of sanitation. It will mark a distinct era in human civilization, an era in which all else must and shall be subordinated to the prevention of disease. And this will not be altogether humanitarianism, for a human life has its commercial value, a definite value worthy of consideration.

One of the first results of this remarkable sanitary crusade will be noticed in Central and South America. Idle money of several nations is now restless and seeking investment; tropical peoples, depressed by climate, and enervated by centuries of disease, have not kept pace with the progress of the world, and opportunities for good dividends are easily found; and capital will throw every protection around employees for selfish reasons. Great commercial, agricultural and industrial development immediately follows new and important lines of transportation; and, in addition to the enormous investments of the United States government in the Zone, private capital will flow into the country in a steady stream. No individual, corporation or nation can afford to ignore this striking lesson in sanitation. The country will first be made fit for habitation and then development will follow. This movement will be far reaching, and will have its effect upon the history of Central and South American republics.

If this can be done in Panama, most unhealthy of all countries, what should we not accomplish in our own country, with so many superior advantages? Shall we go on permitting hundreds of thousands of people to die of preventable diseases like typhoid fever, malaria and tuberculosis? The heavy mortality from these and other diseases is highly discreditable to an enlightened people. It is a lamentable fact that while this marvelous transformation was taking place in the Canal Zone, poisoning patent-medicine makers and conscienceless food adulterators were spending money by the millions to defeat the purpose of the people to establish a health bureau in Washington to prevent disease and promote the public health. Our national state and municipal health officers, and our citizens, should study this great lesson well and profit by it. Thorough instruction of our twenty millions of school children on practical sanitation would result in