Panama Canal:

       The Panama Canal is an artificial 48-mile waterway that connects the Atlantic and  Pacific Oceans and is a key conduit for international maritime trade. The first attempt to build the canal was in 1881 when French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps inspired the French people following his successful Suez Canal. However, even though Lesseps Sue Canal was almost half the length of the proposed Panama Canal, tropical rain forests, climate, the need for canal locks, and the lack of a followable route made the Panama Canal a far greater challenge. By 1884 the death rate was over 200 workers per month and even though the severity of conditions were downplayed in France to avoid recruitment problems the high mortality rate and depletion of funds eventually doomed the French attempt. 

         In 1894 a second French attempt at the Canal, named the New Panama Canal Company, was speaking American involvement and by 1902 the U.S. Senate had voted in favor of pursuing the project. 

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        The United States took formal control of the canal property in May 1904. This included a depleted French workforce, a mess of crumbling buildings, poor infrastructure and even worse equipment. In 1905 John Frank Stevens was appointed chief engineer. Stevens rebuilt the housing, cafeterias, water systems, repair shops and warehouses, he then began the recruitment effort, enticing thousands of workers to join the project. In conjunction with Stevens, Colonel William C. Gorgas worked as chief sanitation officer to minimize the spread of deadly diseases. It took nearly two years to eradicate the mosquito-spread diseases such as yellow fever and malaria. Even with all of this effort, nearly 5,600 workers died of disease and accidents during the U.S. construction of the canal.

        The spread of yellow fever and malaria was horrifying during the canal's construction. Some reports estimate that in 1905 nearly %80 of the workforce was hospitalized. Yellow Fever induced headaches, fever, and muscle pain, culminating in jaundice, dark black vomit caused by internal hemorrhaging, even kidney failure and coma. Even worse, malaria survivors were not immune to reoccurrences of the disease and was difficult to prevent the diseases as doctors had a difficult time differentiating between the two.

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Click here to watch a short history.com video about the Panama Canal!