1. The Fight Against Yellow Fever: The Building of the Panama Canal
Reading Activity

2. Background Information/Review
Yellow fever: Fever, chills, loss of appetite, nausea, muscle pains, thirst, yellow skin, coughing up black blood
Epidemic during the Spanish-American War: Over 5,000 soldiers died of disease. Yellow fever was the most feared of the many diseases that swept through the American camps: its mortality rate was known to reach 85 percent.– University of Virginia
Colonel William Crawford Gorgas: Army doctor during the Spanish American War

3. The Fight Against Yellow Fever
…Doctors had learned that mosquitos transmitted the disease, first by biting an infected person and then a healthy one. When Gorgas arrived in Panama (during the construction of the canal), he found mosquitos everywhere. Yet most people considered the flying insects little more than an annoyance. They believed yellow fever came from the fumes rising from the swamps.
Have students define all underlined words

4. Why were people not really bothered by the mosquitos?
A. They thought the fever came from the fumes from the swamps
B. They did not know bugs could carry diseases
C. They were immune to yellow fever

5. The Fight Against Yellow Fever
Gorgas found no screens on windows and no mosquito nets over yellow fever patients. Everywhere he looked, he saw pools of standing water– the perfect breeding grounds for mosquitos. During their time in Panama, the French, in trying to discourage annts, had placed stone rings filled with water around plants in their lush gardens. They had even rested the legs of hospital beds in water. “If the French had been trying to propagate yellow fever,” Gorgas observed, “they could have not provided conditions better adapted for this purpose.”

6. What might nets around beds and screens in windows do?
Keep people from getting bit

7. What did Gorgas mean when he said “If the French had been trying to propagate yellow fever, they could have not provided conditions better adapted for this purpose.”
They created the perfect condition for mosquitos, that carry yellow fever.
Give them the option to see mosquito larva

8. The Fight Against Yellow Fever
Gorgas set out to eliminate standing water, install screens, and cover beds with mosquito netting. It was exhausting work. Every drop of standing water in this rainy climate had to be dumped or covered. Back in the United States, some politicians dismissed the campaign to eliminate mosquitos as “balderdash”. But Gorgas pressed on. He and his men fumigated countless homes. They filled in every ditch they could find, and sprayed every open pool with sealing oil. Pipes were installed so every community would have running water, which meant they had no reason to store water where mosquitos could breed.

9. Using the context clues, what might sealing oil do?
He and his men fumigated countless homes. They filled in every ditch they could find, and sprayed every open pool with sealing oil. Pipes were installed so every community would have running water, which meant they had no reason to store water where mosquitos could breed.
Repel mosquitos, keep them from breeding, kill them?

10. The Fight Against Yellow Fever
In two years, Gorgas brought yellow fever under control. One day he gathered hospital staff members around a corpse and told them to “take a good look” because this was likely to be the last victim of yellow fever they would see. It was.

11. What carried Yellow Fever?
A. Rats
B. Fumes from swamps
C. Mosquitos

12. How did mosquitos carry the fever?
A. The parasite effected their larva and they passed it to humans as adults
B. They bit one sick person then bit a healthy person
C. When you smack a mosquito to kill it, the mosquito blood gets into your body

13. Why did Gorgas tell the staff to “take a good look”?
A. To be able to identify someone with yellow fever
B. To gross them out
C. To make the point that yellow fever was an issue no longer

14. Great job! Hopefully you learned something new!
Exit ticket: Tell me in CHAT one thing you learned today
I will call your name when you may be dismissed
Have a great weekend!