een completely
eradicated. Admissions to hospital for malarial fever amount, it must
be confessed, to several thousands a year. But, judging from the
terrible experiences of the French Company, were it not for these
precautions fever would incapacitate for long periods the whole of the
staff.

The hospital, a heritage from the French, is a village of wooden
buildings set upon a hill overlooking the Gulf of Panama, in the midst
of a charming study in tropical gardening. It is managed with an energy
which explores to the uttermost the medical experiences of other
tropical countries, and is not afraid of improving upon time-honored
methods. The daily dose of quinine is seldom less than forty-five
grains, and patients are not allowed to leave their beds until their
temperature has remained normal for five days at least. Complaints of
deafness are disregarded; if the patient turns of a blue color he may
be consoled by a dose of Epsom salts. It is claimed that by this
drastic treatment the relapses are prevented which, in India and
elsewhere, probably account for at least nine attacks out of ten.

Democracies are not always fortunate in the selection of their
executives. But Mr. Roosevelt's Government was gifted with the wit to
find, in the United States Army, men who could carry out this big work,
and with the good sense to employ them. So much is told of the
commanding influence of Colonel Goethals, the chief in command; of the
administrative talents of Colonel Gorgas, the head of the sanitary
department; of the engineering skill of Colonel Sibert, the protagonist
of the Gatun dam, that an Englishman must wish to claim kinship with
these American officers who are making so large a mark upon the surface
of the earth. Devotion to the great work in hand has exorcised meaner
feelings, and you will hear little of the "boost" which we are tempted
to associate with the other side of the Atlantic. I asked Colonel
Sibert whether his initial calculations had needed much correction as
the operation developed. "Our _guesses_" he replied, "have been
remarkably fortunate." The medical staff relate with delight how a
British doctor, sent by the Indian Government to study their methods,
being left to himself for half an hour, succeeded in catching quite a
number of mosquitoes of a very noxious kind within the mosquito-proof
precincts of a hospital ward.

New York is now divided from San Francisco by 13,135 miles of sea
travel. The Cana