Of the six important tropical diseases, plague, which reached the
Isthmus one year, was quickly held in check. Yellow fever, the most
dreaded of them all, never recurred. Beri-beri, which in 1906 caused
sixty-eight deaths, has gradually disappeared. The hookworm disease,
ankylostomiasis, has steadily decreased. From the very outset, malaria
has been taken as the measure of sanitary efficiency. Throughout the
French occupation it was the chief enemy to be considered, not only
because of its fatality, but on account of the prolonged incapacity
following infection. In 1906, out of every 1000 employees there were
admitted to the hospital from malaria 821; in 1907, 424; in 1908, 282;
in 1912, 110; in 1915, 51; in 1917, 14. The fatalities from the disease
have fallen from 233 in 1906 to 154 in 1907, to 73 in 1908 and to 7 in
1914. The death rate for malarial fever per 1000 population sank from
8.49 in 1906 to 0.11 in 1918. Dysentery, next to malaria the most
serious of the tropical diseases in the Zone, caused 69 deaths in 1906;
48 in 1907; in 1908, with nearly 44,000, only 16 deaths, and in 1914,
4.(*) But it is when the general figures are taken that we see the
extraordinary reduction that has taken place. Out of every 1000 engaged
in 1908 only a third of the number died that died in 1906, and half the
number that died in 1907.