Building the Panama Canal
The French in the 1880s had attempted to build a canal across Panama, this catastrophic failure, resulted in the deaths of over 22,000 individuals who were working on the canal project due to malaria and yellow fever. The French eventually stopped their attempt on the project in 1889.
The disease takes on this name because of the horrendous attack on the body that may lead to liver failure and result in a yellowish tone to the skin. The disease is a hemorrhagic fever which assaults the body causing a lengthy list of symptoms including vomiting, nausea, body aches, headaches, coughing up blood and possible resulting in death.
Colonial William Gorgas first let the charge in Cuba and then later in Panama to create a sanitation campaign, which laid waste to the habitats and breeding grounds for the mosquito carrying of the disease and discouraged other forms of contamination, such as isolating those who were sick in quarantine. With his successful program, the United States government was eventually able to complete the canal project in a 10 year period, at the beginning of the 10th century.