'Warrior in white'
By William Roger Jones
In early December, Dr. Kirby Southall invited his Sunday school class and others to his countryside home for a pre-Christmas party. Pressed by friend and counselor-at-law Ernie Holleman, it was a bit of a drive there, but well worth attending, as kindness and friendliness were in the air.
After a house tour, I was really floored by his wall-to-wall library, as I am a book lover. In fact, he lent me a book about doctors and engineers and a 30,000 labor force that built the Panama Canal. The mass influx of workers had no immunity and resistance to what they would encounter between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn.
The book centers on one physician, William Crawford Gorgas, whose mission as the chief sanitation officer was to ensure a healthy workforce by defeating the killer yellow fever, malaria, and even pneumonia. He had to take care of the canal “injury average of 500 men per week.”
Aside from learning geography facts, like the canal runs north to south to connect the east and west, it is seen that the fundamental dispositions and traits of humans were then what they are today. So, in 1904, the world was not yet convinced that the mosquito (although it had been proven in 1880 for malaria and 1881 for yellow fever) was transmitting the diseases. The chairman of the Canal Commission (controlling the purse strings) boomed at Colonel Gorgas: “So you're still holding to that ridiculous notion that mosquitoes carry yellow fever.”
“I am. Most assuredly so,” Gorgas replied.
“Oh come now, Gorgas. This is 1904, not the Middle Ages.”
Thus, errors, mistakes, blunders, slips and lapses of men gave pain to progress.
The machinery of government was then what it is today: “A vast series of interlocking hierarchies, riddled through and through with incompetence and graft and corruption.” Despite red tape bogging down supplies and materials and a lamentable dearth of funds, Gorgas was able to accomplish a miracle through determination.
There were the experts sitting around, telling each other how smart they were, rather than asking the engineers and doctors what the problems were. And, too, there were the unprepared Senate committees to overcome. There were reporters stirring up ignorance and stupidity. “Charges of inefficiency flew south (Canal Zone) while explanations limped north (Washington, D.C.).”
Near its peak, yellow fever and malaria “hospital cases had mounted to a staggering 250 per month out of every 1,000 workers.” With iron anger in his voice, Gorgas stated: “The only things we have no trouble in requisitioning are caskets!”
There are other heroes to be found in the historical story, especially the volunteers who took mosquito bites in studies to confirm to doubters that the mosquito-transmission theory was correct.
The older sister of sleep had taken friends from Gorgas and the grief, woefulness and distress of mind gave him great pangs of guilt and sorrow that he could not have done more. He cried out, “Oh God! How useless I feel!” Gorgas bid his “goodbye.”
The 40.27 land miles formally opened on Aug. 15, 1914, with the passage of the cargo ship S.S. Ancon.
“William Crawford Gorgas: Warrior in White,” by Edward F. Dolan, Jr. and H.T. Silver.
The author (wrjones@vsu.edu) teaches English as a second language and is a chemistry lab coordinator and research technician at Virginia State University.