In 1888 the French company suspended payments and went into bankruptcy. The canal was completed to the extent of about two-fifths, and had already cost nearly L80,000,000. It was said at the time that about one-third of this sum was spent on the canal, one-third wasted, and one-third stolen. The original capital with the eight subscription lists between 1882 and 1888 produced nominally L78,701,020, but actually only L40,309,348, the loss in discounts, etc., amounting to L38,391,672. The collapse of the company was followed by investigations and trials in France. Ten senators and deputies, together with the directors, were brought to trial. Ferdinand and his son Charles de Lesseps were, among others, condemned to fines and imprisonment, but the sentences upon the Lesseps were never carried out. Neither the son nor the father was probably responsible for the iniquities which had marked the history of the company. The genius who had created the Suez Canal was indeed completely broken down by the tragical conclusion of his second venture, and died in 1894 in a condition of mental and physical collapse. But financial profligacy was not the only cause of the French failure. Disease and death fought against the enterprise from the first. Yellow fever and malaria caused as much mortality among the French employees as would suffice for a great military campaign. Sir Ronald Ross, the great expert in tropical diseases, was told in 1904, when at the isthmus, that the French attempt cost at least 50,000 lives. This may have been an over-estimate, but there is no doubt that the mortality was terrible, and would probably have brought the French operations to an end even if greater economy and honesty had prevailed in the administration. It must not be supposed that the French made no provision for the victims of these endemic diseases. Excellent hospitals were built at Ancon, near Panama, at a cost of over a million of money; while those at Colon cost more than a quarter of a million--in both cases about three times a fair and honest price. At the time of the French occupation of the isthmus nothing was known of the real nature and cause of yellow fever and malaria, of the manner in which they are transmitted, and the only effective means of prevention. All the recent and marvellous advance in scientific knowledge of these diseases was available when the Americans began their work, and was applied with the greatest efficiency and success. Medical science, quite as much as engineering skill, made a Panama canal possible, and we shall have a good deal more to say on this subject when we come to describe the American operations.