Show ISTHMUS SICKNESS The rhe statement of neither Secretary Bishop of the isthmian n canal commission nor of Colonel Totten who was an engineer in the building of the original Panama railroad regarding the number num num- her ber of deaths among the employed ed in building the road counts against facts The rho old story that there thero was a n death th for or every cross ti tion tie oja on the road was never intended to be literally believed belie it was told only to give an idea of the fearful mortality Mr Tir Bishop does not get his I t ties s ri right hf c even The l rule l be before ore st steel el r rails rails' a and heavy machinery c came me in m vogue n ney ver r exceeded on on one t tie e each two feet or or 2640 2649 per mile and more often it was a tie eve every y thirty inches We Ve mention mention mention men men- tion that to show that Mr Ir Secretary Bishop is isn n not t at all thorough in 11 his s investigations The first twenty miles of the road were were mostly through a swamp which swarmed H with ili Ii alligators and mos mos- The Panama or Chagres fever was not at atall atall atall all understood by physicians The real eaI cause was never suspected but was ascribed to malaria and treated accordingly with the result that SO per percent percent percent cent of those stricken died and those who recovered red ered did so in spite bf of the doctors The first laborers employed ed were Irishmen Of these a ge gentleman on the isthmus told the writer that 2000 had been buried in one cemetery The road had then had then progressed fourteen miles out out of Aspinwall Because of of- the awful mortality Ja Jamaica Jamaica Ja- Ja Ja-I Ja maica negroes were next tried trie but they thea- too air aIl died or went away But b by this time the jungle and the swamp had bad been passed and the road had reached the high lands It was finally completed b by jy Americans from the piney woo woods s of Maine Colonel Totten's statement that only some 1200 died in ill the five years that it required to build miles of road caD cah can only only- b be explained explained ex ex- on the theor that it was the policy of the road to fo cover up the real eal truth lest it al alarm lm peo people plc desiring to make the journey journe between I New NewYork ew York and San Francisco We Ve are tre certain that quite quit 1200 died on the steamers receiving passengers gels gers at the isthmus I IYe We Ye believe that the time records show th that t several eral thousand Frenchmen died there when French engineers en en- were trying tring to build the time canal and that the he mortality was what really caused the caused sed French I to abandon the work Panama f fOyer fever yer is quite as fatal as yellow ellov fever and ind we have the records of that from Havana andall and ancl ill all over southern cities I Of course any my statement now doos lo not much matter but it has hap a tendency to tod d detract tra tract t from from the honor hOllor and amI gratitude d due e those m magnificent nt men who took their lives j i jn i their hands to try to establish cs- cs the causes of these diseases and succeeded It was the finest work ever per performed ormed b by a devoted de IC voted band of scientists It ma made Jc the building of or orthe the he canal possible and incidentally gave ga S Secretary j his job |