Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/303

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CANAL ZONE SANITATION
299

ducing the mortality from preventable diseases by half in one generation. This proposition was demonstrated beyond all question in a great educational campaign on the mosquito in the San Antonio public schools several years ago in which the mosquito was completely exterminated.

It is an inspiring sight to witness this unseemly, death-ridden tropical country, changed into a place of beauty and a veritable health resort, right in the midst of disease and death. The Panama Canal is a wonderful feat of engineering, and we can easily imagine civil engineers attempting in the near future to conserve and utilize the motor power of the ocean waves and the trade winds. All due honor to the engineers.

But when the world's vessels sail through Lake Bohio, whose waters will be impregnated with millions of dollars worth of the rusting iron of the French failure, it will be a glorious triumph of scientific sanitation, and a great lesson to all nations and peoples down the centuries; an example that will be emulated and add much to human health, happiness and longevity.