Colonel W. C. Gorgas, Chief Sanitary Officer, and His Office Force

President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Colonel William Crawford Gorgas as Sanitary Officer for the Panama Canal. Gorgas arrived in Panama in June 1904 with a sanitary team consisting of seven doctors and a single nurse, no funds and no supplies. Nearly all members of the team, including Gorgas, contracted malaria within the first two months. Gorgas’s team discovered that direct sunlight, rain, and strong breezes killed immature Anopheles mosquitoes. The Sanitation Department mushroomed from eight employees under a $5,000 budget to more than 4,000 employees with a $2 million budget by the end of 1906. It is estimated that 78,000 canal workers and thousands more Panamanians would have died had Dr. Gorgas not implemented his program of fumigation and sanitation.