On Culebra Island, nine or ten comfortable and substantial frame buildings were erected, capable of caring for some three or four hundred persons. They consisted of two small hospitals, divided so that five or six different kinds of contagious diseases could be cared for, if necessary, at the same time; a large barrack building with a capacity of two hundred beds for the care of steerage passengers, divided into a male and female side; a large building of a capacity of seventy-two beds, for the care of first and second-class passengers, divided into small wards and rooms for the separate care of the two classes of passengers; another large building for the housing of the employees of the station; a smaller building for the dispensary, doctor’s office and administration, and a comfortable residence for the doctor and his family. The station was well equipped for making the different classes of passengers comfortable, and for the care of the sick. In connection with the station we kept equipped a self-propelling barge of about one hundred tons capacity. This vessel was named the _Walter Reed_, and was supplied with modern machinery for generating sulphur fumes and pumping these fumes aboard the ship to be fumigated. These islands are about three miles from the mainland. There was no more desirable place about Panama in which to spend a week than the quarantine station. The site was as picturesque and attractive as could be desired, and its location, three miles out in the bay, made the temperature cool and agreeable. I have to confess that, as a general thing, the passengers quarantined at Culebra did not appreciate its beauties and comforts sufficiently to stay an hour after their quarantine period. One of our ministers, however, coming up the west coast with his family, was held at the quarantine station for several days, in order that his quarantine period might be completed. When the time had expired, he came to the city of Panama, took a look around, remembered the beauty and comfort of Culebra Island and the quarantine station, and concluded that he would like to take his family, return to the island, and stay there until his ship sailed. This we gave him permission to do, and he and his family remained at Culebra about a week after his quarantine period had expired. This established the reputation of the Panama quarantine as being a salubrious, delightful and desirable place in which to be detained. CHAPTER XXI MEASURES AGAINST BUBONIC PLAGUE In 1906, when our malarial rate was highest, we had eight hundred out of every thousand of our employees admitted to hospitals on account of malaria. In 1913 we had only seventy out of every one thousand of our laborers admitted for this disease. The yearly table for malarial rate is as given below: 1906 821 per 1,000 1907 426 ” 1,000 1908 282 ” 1,000 1909 215 ” 1,000 1910 187 ” 1,000 1911 184 ” 1,000 1912 110 ” 1,000 1913 76 ” 1,000