In Havana at this time there was another army surgeon who was destined to write his name high upon the pages of medical achievement. He was Dr. William C. Gorgas. Under the patronage of Gen. Leonard Wood, himself a physician and alive to the lessons of the yellow fever commission's investigations, Major Gorgas undertook to apply the doctrine of yellow fever prevention promulgated by the commission, and his efforts were attended with brilliant success. The result was that Havana, in particular, and Cuba, in general, were freed from this great terror of the Tropics. When President Roosevelt came to provide for the building of the Panama Canal one of his earlier acts was to appoint Dr. Gorgas the chief sanitary officer of the Canal Zone. At first there was difficulty in establishing practical sanitation in Panama. The chief sanitary officer was then a subordinate of the commission, and, along with all of the other men who were trying to do things on the Isthmus, he found himself hindered by unsatisfactory conditions both as to supplies and as to force; consequently, his work was no more satisfactory to himself than it was to the commission or to the American people. Under these conditions an epidemic of yellow fever broke out in Panama in 1905, and it was not long before the yellow fever mosquito had seemingly established an alibi and had secured a reopening of her case before the jury of public sentiment. People, to emphasize their disbelief in the mosquito theory of the transmission of the disease, tore the screens from their doors and windows, and otherwise proclaimed their contempt for the doctors and their doctrines. This matter went so far that the Isthmian Canal Commission proposed not only a change in method but a change in personnel as well. At this juncture Charles E. Magoon became governor of the Canal Zone, and he declared that Dr. Gorgas should have adequate financial and moral support. He was determined that the panic which the yellow fever outbreak had engendered should be halted--and a panic it was, for men rushed madly to Colon and defied the efforts of the commission, and of the captains and crews of the Panama Railroad steamships, to prevent them from returning to the States without other transportation arrangements than a determination to get aboard and stay there until the Statue of Liberty had been passed in New York Harbor. So great was this panic that Chief Engineer Stevens declared that there were three diseases at Panama: Yellow fever, malaria, and cold feet: and that the greatest of these was cold feet. The newspapers of the United States at that time quoted the poetry of such writers as Gilbert, who said: "Beyond the Chagres River 'Tis said (the story's old) Are paths that lead to mountains Of purest virgin gold; But 'tis my firm conviction What e'er the tales they tell, That beyond the Chagres River All paths lead straight to hell."