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Updated: June 4, 2025
Not only is the profession indebted to Colonel Gorgas and his staff for this remarkable demonstration, but they have offered an example of thoroughness and efficiency which has won the admiration of the whole world.
These pests breed in stagnant water and it was discovered that kerosene on the water forms a film on the surface that means death to the newborn mosquito. Then began one of the greatest battles of all history, the fight to eradicate the mosquito pest. Colonel Gorgas had charge of the forces and he was determined to do the job well.
General Goethals was sent to Panama, and he put it through. Himself a skillful engineer, confident of the success of the enterprise, and with all the resources of Uncle Sam back of him, he set to work. Surgeon-General Gorgas stamped out yellow fever and malaria by draining the swamps and eliminating the mosquito, making the canal zone practically a health resort.
The unreasoning crowd, armed with pikes and staves, cared nothing for these words. After handling rather roughly some councilors who were insisting upon the adoption of vigorous measures, the mob was about to storm the house where the Squire was and level it to the ground, when the Governor, Otto von Gorgas, appeared in the city at the head of his troopers.
William L. Sibert, Corps of Engineers, U. S. Army; Civil Engineer H. H. Rousseau, U. S. Navy; Mr. J. C. S. Blackburn; Col. W. C. Gorgas, U. S. Army, and Mr. Jackson Smith, Commissioners. This change of authority and direction went into effect on April 1, without causing a perceptible check to the progress of the work.
As Sir Otto von Gorgas realized that this was not the moment to exchange any words with him on the subject of the behavior of which he had been guilty, he merely told him, with a look of quiet contempt, to dress himself, and, for his own safety, to follow him to the apartments of the knight's prison.
The distressing experience of the army was too real not to have its constructive effect. Men like William Crawford Gorgas were inspired to study the sanitation and the diseases of the tropics and have now made it possible for white men to live there safely. Men of affairs like Elihu Root were stimulated to give their talents to army administration.
He administered to Sir Otto von Gorgas a severe rebuke for the misleading and ill-considered artifice to which he had resorted to rid the vicinity of Wittenberg of the incendiary.
He listened and then asked them to get a letter about him from Dr. William H. Welsh of Johns Hopkins. Dr. Welsh wrote a letter praising the man very highly, but ended by saying that while it was true that he would be a good man for the place, he did not think he would be as good as the one they already had General Gorgas.
So much is told of the commanding influence of Colonel Goethals, the chief in command; of the administrative talents of Colonel Gorgas, the head of the sanitary department; of the engineering skill of Colonel Sibert, the protagonist of the Gatun dam, that an Englishman must wish to claim kinship with these American officers who are making so large a mark upon the surface of the earth.
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