"A feeling of alarm, almost amounting to panic, spread among the Americans on the Isthmus. Many resigned their positions to return to the United States, while those who remained became possessed with a feeling of lethargy or fatalism, resulting from a conviction that no remedy existed for the peril. There was a disposition to partly ignore or openly condemn and abandon all preventive measures. The gravity of the crisis was apparent to all." [28] Annual Report, 1905, p. 30. Colonel Gorgas writes[29] of this time:-- "We could readily see that if the conditions as they existed in 1905 were to continue the Canal would never be finished." And he adds that:-- "The Executive Board of the Commission itself, as late as June, 1905, stated that the sanitary work of the Isthmus had been a failure and recommended that the _personnel_ be changed and other methods tried. But the Supreme Authorities ... gave us steady support, and by the following December yellow fever had disappeared from the Isthmus." [29] "Sanitation in the Canal Zone." The total deaths among employees of the Commission from yellow fever during the 12 months October 1, 1904, to September 30, 1905, was 37, among about 17,000.[30] The total from yellow fever among the whole population, including Canal employees, during the four months May 1 to August 31, 1905, was 47, while the number of deaths from malaria during the same period was 108. The effect of malaria in impairing physical efficiency was even more in excess than these figures indicate, for the fatal cases are a small proportion of the whole in malaria, and a very large proportion in yellow fever. The moral effect of the imminence of the more sudden and fatal form of disease was, however, as these reports show, much the greater, and it was this moral effect which caused the crisis above described. [30] In 1883-84 the French Company lost by yellow fever 66 men out of about the same number of employees. * * * * * Previous to February, 1905, the Department of Sanitation had done little to improve the hygienic conditions of Colon and Panama, chiefly owing to the opinion until then maintained by the legal advisers that there was no authority to expend money in those cities, which are not within the Canal Zone. In April the yellow fever broke out; the number of men employed by the Department of Sanitation was increased to the huge total of 4,100, and the battle with yellow fever began in earnest. All cases were either transported to screened buildings, or, if left in their own homes, these were carefully screened with fine-meshed copper gauze. The object of this isolation was to prevent the patient from infecting healthy _stegomyia_ mosquitoes.