A medical clinic was built up under the supervision of Dr. W. W. Decks, where every variety of tropical disease could be seen in all its phases. A laboratory for original research was also attached to the hospital. This laboratory was developed by Dr. Samuel Darling, and in it a great deal of useful original work has been done. The pathological work of the hospital was done in this laboratory. From the peculiarity and isolation of our position on the Isthmus, many things were done by the Sanitary Department which in the United States are done by other branches of the Government, or by individuals. In the early days, when there was a great deal of fear and alarm on the Isthmus among the Americans with regard to health conditions, the Commission promised their American employees that all who died on the Isthmus should have their bodies returned to their friends in the United States, at the expense of the Commission. The fulfilling of this promise was turned over to the Sanitary Department, and to carry it out, an undertaking department was established and attached to the laboratory. The expense of this department is one of the very many items that bear no relation to sanitation, merely because the officers of the Sanitary Department supervised the work, and the employees were carried on the rolls of this Department. There being nothing else of this kind on the Isthmus, it gradually came about that whenever anyone died and his friends wished to have the body embalmed, we were called upon to do it, and in later years, as the non-employee population increased, there was a great deal of this outside work. Strange to say, in our rather complicated and involved accounts on the Isthmus, when the President of the Republic of Panama died, the Sanitary Department was called upon to embalm the body. The considerable cost of this operation, $100 or more, is charged to sanitation on the Isthmus, and while the Commission was a good deal more than reimbursed by the family from this expenditure, the reimbursement was not credited to sanitation, but went, under the law, to engineering and construction. It seems all through as though the laws were framed with the idea of making sanitation appear to have cost as much as possible, and the construction of the Canal as little as possible. In a former chapter I stated that when we came down, in June, 1904, we purchased in New York and took with us $50,000 worth of supplies. Among these supplies were a certain number of coffins. When they were unloaded on the dock at Colon, the fact was considerably commented on. Among these coffins were six metallic cases, of a quality much superior to the others. These metallic cases were piled by themselves. The Commission, the governing body at that time on the Isthmus, was composed of seven men, of whom six on that date were present on the Isthmus.