The very best equipment in all directions was obtained, and the very best class of young physicians and surgeons was secured from the United States. At our maximum we had, all told, one hundred and two physicians in the Sanitary Department. Our nursing force was as enthusiastic, as good and as efficient as could be found anywhere. At our maximum we had one hundred and thirty trained nurses from the best training-schools in the United States. As I have mentioned before, the Canal extended from northwest to southeast some fifty miles, the city of Colon being at the northern end and Panama at the southern. The working force was scattered, more or less, along this line between these two points. The French had left two large hospitals, Ancon Hospital at Panama on the southern end, and Colon Hospital at Colon on the northern end. We determined to utilize these two hospitals as base hospitals, and to bring as many patients as possible from along the line to these institutions. We divided the territory between Panama and Colon into as many medical districts as we had sanitary districts, and in each of these districts a small hospital was erected, from twenty to one hundred beds in size, where a certain number of sick could be treated, whom we thought it would not be advantageous to transport to the two base hospitals. Many of the districts had several villages within their borders where the laborers lived. Each of these villages had in it a small hospital of from five to fifteen beds where the sick were kept until they could be moved to the district hospital. We had some forty of these sub-district hospitals, which were generally known as rest camps. This gave us, all told, some sixty hospitals. It was evident that we could not afford to make all these sixty hospitals first-class hospitals, and we therefore decided to concentrate upon our two base hospitals and make them first-class in every respect. For instance, in the surgical line we determined to have all the instruments, equipment and personnel that could be obtained in the best equipped hospitals in our large cities. The eighteen district hospitals were well equipped to care for emergency patients, both medical and surgical, and for such as it was thought would be injured by being moved to the base hospitals. The sub-district hospitals, or rest camps, were not equipped at all for the care of surgical cases, but merely for the care of medical cases until they could be moved to the district hospitals.