Program Information

When the Americans took over the construction of the Panama Canal in 1904, the Isthmus was still an unhealthy place to live and work. The Panama Canal Commission's chief sanitary officer was Colonel William Crawford Gorgas.

A Moment in Time is a brief, exciting and compelling journey into the past. Created to excite and enlighten the public about the past, its relevance to the present and its impact on the future, A Moment In Time is a captivating historical narrative that is currently broadcast worldwide.

Transcript

Lead: For 400 years service men and women have fought to carve out and defend freedom and the civilization we know as America. This series on A Moment in Time is devoted to the memory of those warriors, whose devotion gave, in the words of Lincoln at Gettysburg, the last full measure.

Content: When the Americans took over the construction of the Panama Canal in 1904, the Isthmus was still an unhealthy place to live and work. The Panama Canal Commission's chief sanitary officer was Colonel William Crawford Gorgas, son of Josiah Gorgas Ordinance Chief of the Confederacy and President of the University of Alabama. Gorgas followed the measures of Army Surgeon Dr. Walter Reed, who in 1900, had transformed the city of Havana, Cuba, virtually eliminating the tropical diseases of malaria and yellow fever by proving that mosquitoes actually transmitted the disease.

Gorgas arrived at the Canal Zone in 1904 and after one particularly severe outbreak of yellow fever in the Canal Zone, Commission leaders finally gaveGorgas the go-ahead. Following Reed’s earlier work, Gorgas went after the mosquito by destroying the breeding grounds- mainly pools of stagnant water and open containers of water, which were everywhere from hospitals to private homes. In them millions of mosquito eggs matured, and were ready to hatch and spread infection. Gorgas ordered the screening of houses, draining of swamps, fumigation, and the separation of infected patients.

Within 18 months those tropical curses, malaria and yellow fever, were banished from the Canal Zone and in that healthy environment, the canal was completed in 1914. Gorgas’ efforts were a triumph of modern medical practice. He fought disease by going to its source and proved, beyond reasonable doubt, how malaria and yellow fever are spread.

At the University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts.

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