‘A paradise among leprosariums’: Hansen’s disease and affective containment in the Panama Canal Zone

ABSTRACT

The Panama Canal Zone’s American administration established Palo Seco Leper Colony in 1907 in order to contain individuals with Hansen’s disease. Yet containment was never a simple strategy. This article argues that American observers used rhetoric to transmute their fear of Hansen’s disease into pity, imagining isolation as a form of care and buttressing the United States’ claim that the curative violence of incarceration was part of a beneficent global project of humanitarianism, civilization, and modernity. At the same time, residents at Palo Seco often reworked or simply rejected these affective claims, and close attention to the archival record finds examples of their anger, love, and hope, as well as pain, stigma, and loneliness. Residents were labelled and consigned, ostensibly made static and ordered through diagnosis, but the site hosted a dynamism and disorder—in both senses of the word—that American imperialism professed to control, but never could. Palo Seco was a kind of emotional contact zone where managers, commentators, and residents negotiated the affective scripts and sentiments of their imperial encounter. Attention to these subjectivities testifies to the humanness, the ragged edges, and the profound affect of the imperial enterprise and its ableist institutions.

KEYWORDS:

• Panama
• Hansen’s disease
• history of emotion
• United States
• imperialism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Saurabh Dube, ‘Enchantments and Incitements: Modernity, Time/Space, Margins’, in Holt Meyer, Susanne Rau, and Katharina Waldner (eds), SpaceTime of the Imperial, Berlin: Walter deGruyter GmbH, 2017, pp 25–47, p 25.

2 OHA 302, Siler Photographic Collection, Otis Historical Archives, National Museum of Health and Medicine, Silver Spring MD.

3 While ‘Hansen’s disease’ is the preferred modern term, this essay uses ‘leprosy’ to refer to the historical diagnosis and understanding of the condition.

4 See, for example, Julie H. Levison, ‘Beyond Quarantine: A History of Leprosy in Puerto Rico, 1898–1930s’, História, Ciências, Saúde – Manguinhos, 10(supplement 1), 2003, pp 225–245; Anne Perez Hattori, Colonial Dis-Ease: US Navy Health Policies and the Chamorros of Guam, 1898–1941, Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2004; Anne Perez Hattori, ‘Re-membering the Past: Photography, Leprosy and the Chamorros of Guam, 1898–1924’, Journal of Pacific History, 46(3), 2011, pp 293–318; Michelle T. Moran, Colonizing Leprosy: Imperialism and the Politics of Public Health in the United States, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007; Warwick Anderson, Colonial Pathologies: American Tropical Medicine, Race, and Hygiene in the Philippines, Durham: Duke University Press, 2006, Chapter 6; Jose Emmanuel Raymundo, ‘The Political Culture of Leprosy in the US Occupied Philippines, 1902–1941’, PhD dissertation, Yale University, 2008.

5 Diana Obregón, ‘Building National Medicine: Leprosy and Power in Colombia, 1870–1910’, Social History of Medicine, 15(1), 2002, pp 89–108, p 92. See also Diana Obregón, ‘The Social Construction of Leprosy in Colombia, 1884–1939’, Science, Technology & Society, 1(1), 1996, pp 1–23.

6 ‘The International Leprosy Conference at Berlin’, British Medical Journal, 2, 1897, p 1434.

7 Vicki Luker and Jane Buckingham, ‘Histories of Leprosy: Subjectivities, Community and Pacific Worlds’, Journal of Pacific History, 52(3), 2017, pp 265–286. For Kalaupapa, see, for example, Noenoe K. Silva and Pualeilani Fernandez, ‘Mai Ka 'Āina O Ka 'Eha'eha Mai: Testimonies of Hansen's Disease Patients in Hawai'i, 1866–1897’, Hawaiian Journal of History, 40, 2006, pp 75–97; Pennie Moblo, ‘Ethnic Intercession at Kalaupapa Leprosy Colony, 1871–1887’, Pacific Studies, 22(2), 1999, pp 27–69; R.D.K. Herman, ‘Out of Sight, Out of Mind, Out of Power: Leprosy, Race, and Colonization in Hawai'i’, Journal of Historical Geography, 27(3), 2001, pp 319–337; Ron Amundson and Akira Oakaokalani Ruddle-Miyamoto, ‘A Wholesome Horror: The Stigmas of Leprosy in 19th Century Hawaii’, Disability Studies Quarterly, 30(3/4), 2010, https://dsq-sds.org/article/view/1270/1300; Kerri A. Inglis, ‘Nā hoa o ka pilikia (Friends of Affliction): A Sense of Community in the Moloka‘i Leprosy Settlement of 19th Century Hawai‘i’, Journal of Pacific History, 52(3), 2017, pp 287–301; Kerri A. Inglis, Ma‘i Lepera: Disease and Displacement in Nineteenth-Century Hawai‘i, Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2013; Anwei Skinsnes Law, Kalaupapa: A Collective Memory, Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2012; Adria L. Imada, ‘Family History as Disability History: Native Hawaiians Surviving Medical Incarceration’, Disability Studies Quarterly, 41(4), 2021, https://dsq-sds.org/index.php/dsq/article/view/8475/6289; Adria L. Imada, ‘Lonely Together: Subaltern Family Albums and Kinship During Medical Incarceration’, Photography and Culture, 11(3), 2018, pp 297–321; Adria L. Imada, ‘Promiscuous Signification: Leprosy Suspects in a Photographic Archive of Skin’, Representations, 138, 2017, pp 1–36; Adria L. Imada, An Archive of Skin, An Archive of Kin: Disability and Life-Making during Medical Incarceration, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2022.

8 Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, 2nd ed, London: Routledge, 2008.

9 Mary Klages, Woeful Afflictions: Disability and Sentimentality in Victorian America, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.

10 Martha Stoddard Holmes, Fictions of Affliction: Physical Disability in Victorian Culture, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004, p 17.

11 David Arnold, ‘Leprosy: From ‘Imperial Danger’ to Postcolonial History – An Afterword’, Journal of Pacific History, 52(3), 2017, pp 407–419, p 408.

12 Rod Edmond, Leprosy and Empire: A Medical and Cultural History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, p 4.

13 Imada, Archive of Skin, p 21.

14 Kyla Schuller, The Biopolitics of Feeling: Race, Sex, and Science in the Nineteenth Century, Durham: Duke University Press, 2017, p 2. Discourses of fear and charity toward people with Hansen’s disease were also prevalent the San Francisco pesthouse. See Guenter B. Risse, Driven by Fear: Epidemics and Isolation in San Francisco’s House of Pestilence, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2016.

15 Kamillea Aghtan, ‘Leprous Bodies and Abject Charity’, in Anna Kérchy, and Andrea Zittlau (eds), Exploring the Cultural History of Continental European Freak Shows and ‘Enfreakment’, Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012, pp 20–37, p 22.

16 Eunjung Kim, Curative Violence: Rehabilitating Disability, Gender, and Sexuality in Modern Korea, Durham: Duke University Press, 2017, p 14.

17 See, for example, Anderson, Colonial Pathologies, pp 169–174; Amy L. Fairchild, ‘Community and Confinement: The Evolving Experience of Isolation for Leprosy in Carville, Louisiana’, Public Health Reports, 119, 2004, pp. 362–370; Amy L. Fairchild, ‘Leprosy, Domesticity, and Patient Protest: The Social Context of a Patients' Rights Movement in Mid-Century America’, Journal of Social History, 39, 2006, pp. 1011–1043; Moran, Colonizing Leprosy; Inglis, Ma‘i Lepera, especially Chapter 5 for newspapers; and Risse, Driven by Fear, e.g. p 113.

18 Anderson, Colonial Pathologies, Chapter 6.

19 Megan Vaughan, Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991, pp 79, 77.

20 For this distinction, see Edmond, Leprosy and Empire, p 2.

21 Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008, p 40.

22 See also Imada’s concept of ‘affective excess’ in ‘Promiscuous Signification’, p 22 and Archive of Skin, p 110.

23 Alison Bashford and Carolyn Strange, ‘Isolation and Exclusion in the Modern World: An Introductory Essay’, in Carolyn Strange and Alison Bashford (eds), Isolation: Places and Practices of Exclusion, London: Routledge, 2003, pp 1–19, p 13.

24 ‘Convention for the Construction of a Ship Canal (Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty)’, November 18, 1903, The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20thcentury/pan001.asp.

25 ‘Agreement Effected by Exchange of Notes between the Secretary of War of the United States and the President of Panama’, December 3, 1904, in Treaties, Conventions, International Acts, Protocols, and Agreements between the United States of America and Other Powers, Vol 3, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1923, pp 2757–2761, p 2761.

26 'Lepers in the Canal Zone’, New York Times, 8 March 1908, p 6.

27 Letter from Director of Hospitals to Chief Sanitary Officer, 10 August 1905, file 72-A-1, Part 1, Box 387, General Correspondence, 1905–1914, Entry 30, RG 185 (hereafter General Correspondence, 1905–1914).

28 Letter from Chief Sanitary Officer to Governor, 22 December 1904, File 72-A-1, Part 1, Box 387, General Correspondence, 1905–1914; letter from W.C. Gorgas to Governor, 28 November 1904, File 72-B-19, Part 1, Box 388, General Correspondence, 1905–1914; Don Longfellow, Memorandum for the Governor, 21 February 1955, File ‘Health Director’s Notices, 8/49-8/60’, Box 1, General Records of the Palo Seco Hospital (Leprosarium), 1907–62, A thru Z, RG 185; Ezra Hurwitz and Hamilton H. Anderson, ‘Leprosy in Panama: First Thirty Years of Segregation’, American Journal of Tropical Medicine, 16(3), 1936, pp 353–369.

29 Nelson Rounsevell, ‘Palo Seco Leper Colony’, The Panama Times, 25 July 1925; Hurwitz and Anderson, ‘Leprosy in Panama’.

30 David Arnold, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century India, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993, p 8.

31 Report from A.L. Rosenbaum to John Phillips, 15 August 1913, File 72-A-1, Part 2, Box 387, General Correspondence, 1905–1914. See also A.M. Napier, ‘Experiences in the Canal Zone with Special Reference to Malaria and Leprosy’, Journal of the Missouri State Medical Association, 13, 1916, pp 319–324, p 322.

32 Letter from Richard Reid Rogers to Secretary of War, 27 February 1908, File 72-B-20, Part 1, Box 388, General Correspondence, 1905–1914; J.F. Siler, Memorandum for the Governor, 20 May 1930, p 5, File 13-H-45, Part 6, Box 328, General Records, 1914–34, Entry 34B, RG 185 (hereafter General Records, 1914–34).

33 For more on the selection of this location, see Letter from H.R. Carter to Governor of Canal Zone, 31 August 1905, File 72-A-3, Part 1, Box 387, General Correspondence, 1905–1914.

34 Rounsevell, ‘Palo Seco Leper Colony’.

35 Imada, Archive of Skin, p 6.

36 Rounsevell, ‘Palo Seco Leper Colony’.

37 Edmond calls leprosy ‘a boundary disease par excellence’ (Leprosy and Empire, p 9).

38 Letter from H.R. Carter to Governor of the Canal Zone, 7 August 1905, p 1, File 72-A-3, Part 1, Box 387, General Correspondence, 1905–1914.

39 For more on the concept of ‘scriptive things’ see Robin Bernstein, ‘Dances with Things: Material Culture and the Performance of Race’, Social Text, 27(4), 2009, 67–94.

40 Albion W. Knight, ‘The Lepers of Palo Seco’, The Spirit of Missions, 80(9), 1915, pp 623–626, p 623.

41 ‘Beautiful Surroundings, New Treatment Brighten Life for Palo Seco Patients’, Panama Canal Review, 2(8), 7 March 1952, pp 8–9, p 8.

42 Hattori, ‘Re-membering the Past’, p 301.

43 Paul S. Sutter, ‘Nature’s Agents or Agents of Empire? Entomological Workers and Environmental Change during the Construction of the Panama Canal’, Isis, 98(4), 2007, pp 724–254, p 731.

44 Letter from Mrs. H.L. Grace to ‘Sir’, 7 October 1930; Letter from D.P. Curry to Mrs. N.L. Grace [sic], 21 October 1930, File 72-A-1, Part 8, Box 1273, General Records, 1914–34.

45 Letter from Mrs. Howard L. Grace to Sir’, 5 November 1930, File 72-A-1, Part 8, Box 1273, General Records, 1914–34.

46 Rosemarie Garland Thomson, ‘Introduction: From Wonder to Error—A Genealogy of Freak Discourse in Modernity’, in Rosemarie Garland Thomson (ed), Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body, New York: New York University Press, 1996, pp. 1–19, p 10.

47 Guy Stewart, ‘The Disease’, in ‘Education by Travel’, The Caribbean, 2(1), 1924, pp 34–35, p 34.

48 Rounsevell, ‘Palo Seco Leper Colony’; ‘Leper Colony Visited by Ancon Hospital Nurse’, Panama Star and Herald, 2 August 1931, in File 72-A-1, Part 9, Box 1273, General Records, 1914–34.

49 Katherine Fischer, ‘The Cure’, in ‘Education by Travel’, The Caribbean, 2(1), 1924, pp 35–36, p 36.

50 For an example of the complaints, see ‘Justo’, ‘The Palo Seco Leper Asylum’, Panama Journal, 6 July 1909, in File 72-A-1, Part 1, Box 387, General Correspondence, 1905–1914.

51 Translation of letter from Ciro L. Urriola and Jil F. Sanchez to Honorable Secretary of Foreign Affairs, 3 September 1909, File 72-A-1, Part 1, Box 387, General Correspondence, 1905–1914.

52 Translation of ‘Bradomin’, ‘A Representative of the Diario Visits the Palo Seco Leper Asylum: How the Lepers Live’, El Diario de Panama, 9 August 1917, File ‘Visitors, 1916–1947’, Box 1, General Records of the Palo Seco Hospital (Leprosarium), 1907–62, A thru Z, RG 185.

53 Thomson, ‘Introduction’, p 10.

54 Translation of letter from ‘Several Panamanians’ to Editor of the ‘Diario’, 24 August 1917, File ‘Visitors, 1916-1947’, Box 1, General Records of the Palo Seco Hospital (Leprosarium), 1907–62, A thru Z, RG 185.

55 Mental institutions in the United States were sometimes accused of similar practices. See Gerald N. Grob, The Mad Among Us: A History of the Care of America's Mentally Ill, New York: The Free Press, 1994, p 134.

56 Letter to M.E. Connor, 12 July 1912, File 72-A-1, Part 2, Box 387, General Correspondence, 1905–1914.

57 Letter from W.C. Gorgas to Head of Department of Civil Administration, 25 August 1913, File 72-A-1, Part 2, Box 387, General Correspondence, 1905–1914, letter from General Inspector to Assistant Chief Sanitary Officer, 23 July 1913, File 72-A-1, Part 2, Box 387, General Correspondence, 1905–1914; John L. Phillips, ‘Reglamento para el asillo de leprosos de Palo Seco’, 5 June 1913, File 72-A-1, Part 2, Box 387, General Correspondence, 1905-1914.

58 Letter with 23 signatures [names withheld for anonymity] to John L. Phillips, 16 July 1913, File 72-A-1, Part 2, Box 387, General Correspondence, 1905–1914.

59 R.E. Noble, Memorandum to the Assistant Chief Sanitary Officer, 23 July 1913, File 72-A-3, Part 4, Box 388, General Correspondence, 1905–1914.

60 Letter from A.L. Rosenbaum to John L. Phillips, 24 October 1912, File 72-A-1, Part 2, Box 387, General Correspondence, 1905–1914.

61 Letter from W.C. Gorgas to Head of Department of Civil Administration, 25 August 1913, File 72-A-1, Part 2, Box 387, General Correspondence, 1905–1914.

62 Translation of letter from ‘Some of the patients confined in the Asylum’, to Director, La Estrella de Panama, 17 August 1913, File 72-A-1, Part 2, Box 387, General Correspondence, 1905–1914.

63 Letter from Jos. N Parrott to Acting Chief Health Officer, 2 May 1916, p 2, File 72-A-1, Part 3, Box 1272, General Records, 1914–34; letter from Jos. N Parrott to Charles Mason, 19 September 1914, p 3, File 72-A-3, Part 4A, Box 1274, General Records, 1914–34.

64 John Goldman, ‘Coins for Use by Patients with Hansen's Disease’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 10(4), 1955, p 430.

65 Napier, ‘Experiences in the Canal Zone’, p 322.

66 ‘Panama’s Most Exclusive Community is the Leper Colony at Palo Seco’, Panama Star and Herald, 18 May 1930, File 72-A-1, Part 8, Box 1273, General Records, 1914-34; Albert Ingram, ‘The Patients at Palo Seco’, The Star, 4(9), May 1945, pp 4–5, p 4.

67 ‘Effective at Once’, 25 February 1919, File 72-A-1, Part 5, Box 1272, General Records 1914–34; Report from S.B. Grubbs and others to Chief Health Officer, 16 January 1919, File 72-A-1, Part 5, Box 1272, General Records 1914–34. The rates were raised in 1922 to 14, 10, 8 and 5 cents per hour (‘Board on Rates of Pay: Silver Roll’, 11 August 1922, p 2, File 72-A-1, Part 7, Box 1273, General Records, 1914–34).

68 Hurwitz and Anderson, ‘Leprosy in Panama’, p 357.

69 Ezra Hurwitz, ‘Palo Seco Currency’, n.d., in ‘Organizations File Hospitals – Palo Seco’, Folder 6, Box 22, Canal Zone Library Museum Collection, Library of Congress; Report from S.B. Grubbs and others to Chief Health Officer, 16 January 1919, p 6, File 72-A-1, Part 5, Box 1272, General Records, 1914–34; W.H. Kromer, Memorandum for the Auditor, 19 September 1932, File 72-A-1, Part 9, Box 1273, General Records, 1914–34.

70 H.C. Fisher, Memorandum for General Connor, 15 July 1921, File 72-A-1, Part 6, Box 1273, General Records, 1914–34.

71 Letter from Morris M. Seeley to Chief Quarantine Officer, 3 July 1919, File 72-A-1, Part 5, Box 1272, General Records, 1914–34.

72 Deborah A. Stone, The Disabled State, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984, p 55.

73 Report from S.B. Grubbs and others to Chief Health Officer, 16 January 1919, p 4 and 5, File 72-A-1, Part 5, Box 1272, General Records, 1914–34.

74 Report from S.B. Grubbs and others to Chief Health Officer, 16 January 1919, p 7, File 72-A-1, Part 5, Box 1272, General Records, 1914–34.

75 Chief Sanitary Officer to Panama Journal, 27 July 1909, p 9, in File 72-A-1, Part 1, Box 387, General Correspondence, 1905-1914.

76 Letter from Ezra Hurwitz to Chief Health Officer, 14 October 1932, File 72-A-1, Part 9, Box 1273, General Records, 1914–34.

77 Letter from N.S. [name withheld for anonymity] to D.P. Curry, 6 November 1930, File 13-H-55, Part 3, Box 329, General Records, 1914–34.

78 See for example Kenneth O. Courtney, ‘Leprosy in Panama: A Study of its Origin and Spread’, International Journal of Leprosy, 7(1), 1939, pp 29–40, p 40.

79 Letter from W.C. Gorgas to Chairman and Chief Engineer, 10 January 1912, File 72-A-1, Part 2, Box 387, General Correspondence, 1905–1914.

80 Letter from George Goethals to Chief Sanitary Officer, 11 January 1912, File 72-A-1, Part 2, Box 387, General Correspondence, 1905–1914.

81 Letter from General Inspector to Chief Health Officer, 15 September 1914, File 72-A-3, Part 4A, Box 1274, General Records, 1914–34.

82 Letter from W.C. Gorgas to Acting Chairman, 3 February 1912, File 72-A-1, Part 2, Box 387, General Correspondence, 1905–1914.

83 Letter from W.C. Gorgas to Acting Chairman, 4 January 1913, File 72-A-1, Part 2, Box 387, General Correspondence, 1905–1914.

84 Letter from Jos. N. Parrott to Chief Health Officer, 12 September 1917, File 72-A-1, Part 4, Box 1272, General Records, 1914–34.

85 Napier, ‘Experiences in the Canal Zone’, p 322. This article also indicated that the first application for a marriage was in 1911 and was successful after some investigation; perhaps this is the same marriage that Gorgas ‘accidentally’ allowed.

86 Chief Health Officer, Memorandum for the Governor, 9 June 1919, p 2, File 72-A-1, Part 5, Box 1272, General Records, 1914–34.

87 Letter from Jos. N Parrott to Acting Chief Health Officer, 2 May 1916, p 2, File 72-A-1, Part 3, Box 1272, General Records, 1914–34.

88 Chief Health Officer, Memorandum for the Governor, 9 June 1919, p 4, File 72-A-1, Part 5, Box 1272, General Records, 1914–34; W.P Chamberlain, Memorandum for the Governor, 30 March 1920, p 1, File 72-A-1, Part 8, Box 1273, General Records, 1914-34.

89 Letter from F.D. Tucker to Chief Quarantine Officer, 10 September 1920, p 2, File ‘Palo Seco: Marriage Requests, 1921–1932’, Box 1, General Records of the Palo Seco Hospital (Leprosarium), 1907–62, A thru Z, RG 185; note on bottom of letter from P. Horowitz to Assistant Chief Health Officer, 20 August 1921, in File ‘Palo Seco: Marriage Requests, 1921-1932’, Box 1, General Records of the Palo Seco Hospital (Leprosarium), 1907–62, A thru Z, RG 185; Letter from D.P. Curry to Superintendent of Palo Seco, 23 August 1932, in File ‘Palo Seco: Marriage Requests, 1921–1932’, Box 1, General Records of the Palo Seco Hospital (Leprosarium), 1907–62, A thru Z, RG 185. Compare Harold C. Chalfant, ‘This is Palo Seco’, The Star, 4(9), May 1945, p 1–3, p 1.

90 ‘Global Glimpses: News and Views of Patients from Far and Near’, The Star, 3(8), April 1944, p 7. See also ‘Medical Callers’, The Star, 6(11), July 1947, p 10.

91 Hurwitz and Anderson, ‘Leprosy in Panama’, p 356; Alonso Roy, ‘El hospital de Palo Seco’, La Prensa, 12 June 2000, p 2B.

92 Victor Race, ‘Death Before Death’, Liberty Magazine, 29 September 1945, p 87.

93 Letter from A.L. Rosenbaum to M.E. Connor, 30 January 1912, File 72-A-1, Part 2, Box 387, General Correspondence, 1905–1914.

94 Chalfant, ‘This is Palo Seco’, p 1.

95 W.P Chamberlain, Memorandum for the Governor, 30 March 1920, p 1, File 72-A-1, Part 8, Box 1273, General Records, 1914–34; Chief Health Officer, Memorandum for the Governor, 9 June 1919, p 3, File 72-A-1, Part 5, Box 1272, General Records, 1914–34, Entry 30, RG 185. Four babies were born between 1912 and 1919, and all died (Chief Health Officer, Memorandum for Colonel Fisher, 19 June 1919, File 72-A-1, Part 5, Box 1272, General Records, 1914–34).

96 ‘Beautiful Surroundings’, p 9.

97 ‘Palo Seco’s Dr. Hurwitz Retires, Stays on Job’, Panama American, 13 November 1956, p 1.

98 ‘Beautiful Surroundings’, 9.

99 Letter from E.E. Persons to J.N. Parrott, 12 August 1915, File 72-A-1, Part 3, Box 1272, Geeral Records, 1914–34; P.A. Horwitz, ‘A Preliminary Analysis of the Treatment of Lepers at Palo Seco with the Ethyl Esters of the Fatty Acids of Chaulmoogra Oil’, Proceedings of the Canal Zone Medical Association, 14, 1921, pp 55–59, abstract in E. Chaves-Carballo, American Medicine and the Panama Canal, Morgan Hill, CA: Bookstand Publishing, 2014, p 393. Other sources suggest the oil was only used after about 1919.

100 Rounsevell, ‘Palo Seco Leper Colony’.

101 Stephen Snelders, Leprosy and Colonialism: Suriname Under Dutch Rule, 1750-1950, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017, p 175.

102 W.P. Chamberlain, Report of the Health Department of the Panama Canal for the Calendar Year 1924, Mount Hope: Panama Canal Press, 1925, pp 26–27.

103 Ezra Hurwitz and Hamilton H. Anderson, ‘Leprosy in Panama: The First Thirty Years of Segregation’, American Journal of Tropical Medicine, 16(3), 1936, pp 353–369, p 363. See also Letter from Ezra Hurwitz to Doctor and Mrs. Anderson, 13 December 1934; Jeanette Van D. Anderson and Hamilton H. Anderson, ‘Clinical Studies on the Chemotherapy of Leprosy at Palo Seco Leper Colony: Preliminary Report’, 15 September 1934, File 72-A-1, Part 9, Box 1273, General Records, 1914–34.

104 See Moran, Colonizing Leprosy, pp 111–118, pp 129–131; Risse, Driven by Fear, pp 150–151, pp 166–170.

105 Hurwitz and Anderson, ‘Thirty Years’, pp 368–369.

106 B.H. Kean and M.E. Childress, ‘Summary of 103 Autopsies on Leprosy Patients on the Isthmus of Panama’, International Journal of Leprosy, 10(1), 1942, pp 51–59, p 51.

107 Excerpts from Memorandum of Conference of Department Heads, 16 April 1927, File 72-A-1, Part 8, Box 1273, General Records, 1914–34.

108 Hurwitz and Anderson, ‘Thirty Years of Leprosy’, p 357.

109 ‘Beautiful Surroundings’, p 8.

110 ‘2 Leper Patients Freed from Palo Seco Colony’, Panama Star and Herald, [October? Date not clear] 1923, in File 72-A-1, Part 7, Box 1273, General Records, 1914–34.

111 Hurwitz and Anderson, ‘Thirty Years of Leprosy’, p 360.

112 Race, ‘Death Before Death’, p 89.

113 ‘Rotary Pays Visit to Leper Colony Yesterday’, Panama Star and Herald, [1?] July 1923, in File 72-A-1, Part 7, Box 1273, General Records, 1914–34, Entry 30, RG 185.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, and Yale University.

Notes on contributors

Caroline Lieffers

Caroline Lieffers is an Assistant Professor of History at The King's University in Edmonton, Canada. Her PhD, which she completed in 2020, examined intersections of disability and American imperialism, and she is currently working on her first book, which focuses on injury and disability on the Panama Canal. She also researches food history, the history of elder care in Canada, and the history of childhood and child writers.