During the period of Canal construction there were horrible working conditions.These working conditions included tough weather conditions, constant labor and racial tensions. A life consisting of working on the Canal was far from relaxing. Due to these bad working conditions there was also a very high employee mortality rate. The Canal was filled with dangerous diseases and tools which combined with this high mortality rate made recruitment for workers on the Canal difficult. Finally in 1905, Chief Engineer John F. Stevens recognized this issue. He then began improving living conditions for workers in order to increase the amount of people working on the Panama Canal.
During the construction of the Panama Canal diseases such as Yellow Fever and Malaria were knocking out large populations of workers. These epidemics were hard to fix yet Doctor's William Gorgas and Ronal Ross were determined to help lower the death rates of workers resulting from these diseases. First, Doctor William Gorgas saw Malaria as a larger threat than Yellow Fever due to its higher prevalence along the entire canal zone. Gorgas even stated "If we can't control malaria, I feel very little anxiety about other diseases." In order to work more deeply the prevention of Malaria, Gorgas arrived in the Canal Zone in 1904 as Chief Medical Officer. Gorgas was confident he could stop malaria in Panama by gaining political will and financial resources to get rid of approximately 500 square miles of swamps and forests containing disease carrying mosquitos. Laster, in the fall of 1904, Gorgas returned to Washington with a $1 million dollar plan to fumigate the isthmus and eradicate the disease. However, officials mocked Gorgas' plan and instead put in place the "miasma theory" which said that diseases are carried by bad air or toxins in tropical soil. The next Spring, a large scare hit the canal zone. During this outbreak Alexander Lambert remarked to President Roosevelt "If you fall back on old methods you will fail, just as the french failed. If you back Gorgas you will get your canal." This lead to funding from President Roosevelt that resulted in Gorgas creation of on of the most sanitary campaigns in history.
In 1906, 26,000 people worked and the canal and 21,000 of them had been hospitalized for malaria. However, with Gorgas improvements, the monthly tally of new yellow fever cases had fallen by a half by August. In the following September there were only seven cases and on November 11th, 1906, the last victim of yellow fever had died. Lastly, in January of 1910 Malaria death rates would drop by less than one percent. Overall, the efforts of Doctor William Gorgas changed the lives of many workers on the Panama Canal and ultimately lead to the success of the Canal and exemption of Malaria.
As a worker on the Panama Canal, there are many disease around. However the most prominent diseases at the time were Yellow Fever and Malaria. In 1906, more the 85% of the Canal Workers were hospitalized. IT was a major outbreak the Canal workers could not avoid. THe symptoms of Yellow Fever and death rates were horrifying. These symptoms included headaches, fever and muscle pain. However, the symptoms did progressively get worse consisting of jaundice, thirst, and dark black vomit caused by internal hemorrhaging. This disease was so strong that its ultimate results included kidney failure, delirium, seizures, coma or in the worst case death. ymptoms of Malaria were a tad different consisting of chills, headache, fever, aching, fatigue and nausea. Malaria is different than Yellow Fever however because Malaria survivors were not immune to reoccurrences of the disease. It was difficult to find ways to prevent these diseases due to the fact that doctor's of the time disagreed on ways to tsp these two specific diseases. During this time period humans were not aware that mosquitos were the prime sources of disease. However a few ways doctors tried to cure their parents was with the use of whisky, eggnog, or rubbing a solution of Kerosene and oil on the skin of the patient.
Major Ronald Ross largely contributed to the improvements of Malaria stricken groups around the canal due to his discovery that malaria is transmitted by mosquito's. After this discovery, many new ideas were put into place. The first regulation was put into effect by the United States army the consisted of screening of houses and extensive draining to reduce breeding of mosquito's. This resulted in not only the elimination of yellow fever but also the reduction of malaria. As mentioned earlier about William Gorgas, the Isthmian Canal Commission, prepared a plan of sanitation of the Canal zone, Panama and Colon.
The Isthmus of Panama is an ideal habitat for mosquito's due to the fact that the high temperature varies little during the year, the rainy season lasts for nine months and the interior of the Isthmus is a tropical jungle. The Canal itself extends diagonally across the Isthmus of Panama from south-east to north-west. In Panama, much of the work to prevent malaria was done in rural places, located along the line of railroad between Panama and Colon. Malaria was so abundant in the city of Colon it was estimated that one sixth of the population suffered from malaria each week.
Practices done in order to prevent these large deaths included many things such as drainage, bush and grass cuttings, oiling, screening ect. Overall, the programs and tactics put into place in order to prevent Malaria result of Ronald Ross' initially discovery that these diseases sprout from mosquito's.