GIRL GUIDE CORNER

Waikato Independent, Volume XXVII, Issue 2869, 3 December 1927, Page 2

GIRL GUIDE CORNER

drained swamps, made a lake connecting the two mighty oceans, the Atlantic being about 6ft above the Pacific. Cheerie! BIRDIE.

(By "Birdie.)

'“Dear Readers, —Here wo are again, and I hope you will all be interested in this amazing story of how the mosquito was conquered in the Panama. We will leave our Camping Notes until next week, and perhaps some of our correspondents will again favour our readers with a new supply of fun, nature, lore ,or a few camping songs,games or recipes for camp cooking. DR GORGAS AND THE MOSQUITO. The Americans, when they set out to make their lock canal, sent from 30,000 to 50,000 men, and made a plain mail, William Gorges, their leader. William Gorges was a boy in the time of the Civil War and was a ragged, bare-footed, half-starved little chap. His father was fighting in the South and his mother's struggles! against adversity made, a lasting impression on her son. He went down to Panama as colonel, well armed with the knowledge of the work before him and the discovery of the authors of yellow-fever and malaria.

~ Panama *hc found gave him a sphere of work of 45 miles long and 10 miles wieje, and his only weapon was his knowledge of the mosquito. The mosquito, he knew, lived in dirty stagnant pools and so he shut them up in them and his men went on working. He covered pools that couldn’t bo drained with oil, and drained and sealed every ditch that could be treated so. On his side of the territory were the doctors, dispensers, ditchers, drainers, oilers, and clerks watching over the thousands of labourers, but just over the boundary wore mosquitoes breeding by the millions. Not only had he the deadly mosquito to fight but he had the awful ignorance of the people to contend with. Of what use was it that his little colony should be clean and sanitary when they were surrounded by filth and disease so often found in such districts? But WilliamvGorgas was equal to the occasion. He forced, gently but firmly, the people to screen their houses and cover their water vessels. Everything that could be drained was drained’, cut jungle, destroyed vermin and burned rubbish. All buildings - he had raised above the ground and had them all screened with fine wire. Even the. trains were screened and attached to each train was a hospital car. Knowing that the struggle was long ancl must bo carried, to the bitter end and that his men needed endurance, ho insisted on them all being teetotallers and so lie and his men worked and worked. Seventeen districts were formed, each in charge of a chief sanitary inspector, a clerk, a man who knew the ways of the mosquito, another an expert ditcher, drainer and oiler, and a third who was a good manager.,, Each district'had 40 to 50 workers, drainers and carpenters, and dispensers admin- * istering quinine. The amount of work covered in the year was tremendous and the result is seen tcHlav, the Panama Canal is made / and used with safety, for deaths from yellow fever and malaria are very few and the tremendous (distance between the outposts of the .Empire' and the Homeland can be covered in about five weeks. To those who are privileged to see the Panama must be. one of those marvels once seen never forgotten, and those of us who can only read its storyin books cannot but be lost in admiration at the men who did it, conquered the mosquite,' cut through mountains,