Palo Seco: A Leprosarium

The Palo Seco Leper Asylum was established on April 1907. In 1904 the United States and the new Republic of Panama ratified the Panama Canal Treaty. By that treaty the United States became responsible for the public health of the Canal Zone. The United States sought this in order to effectively combat the diseases of yellow fever and malaria which had contributed greatly to the failure of the French to attempt to build the canal. The American doctors in 1904 discovered a group of 13 outcasts suffering from Hansen's disease (leprosy) were living precariously on a beach near Panama City. A financial arrangement was made whereby the United States would provide for the housing, food and care of any Panamanian lepers in exchange for 75 cents a day per patient.

At Palo Seco, health officials went to great lengths to minimize patients' contact with the outside world. Mail was sterilized with a hot iron before it left the settlement. Special currency, created by the Philadelphia mint, was used between 1919 and 1952 to keep money touched by Hansen's disease sufferers out of the hands of the uninfected. Most precautions were unnecessary. Fear of the disease has always been greater than the danger of contagion.

Palo Seco (the name means "Dry Stick" in Spanish) was an ocean-side 500 acre fruit farm six miles from Panama City. The fruit farm was isolated, and initially access was only by boat (even though it was part of the mainland). In order to be more homelike, the facility was built like a Panamanian village. It had a plaza with a chapel on one side and the dwelling houses on the other side of the plaza. Palo Seco was a wind swept quadrangle of nine buildings consisting of living quarters for single patients, each with a room to himself, married patients' apartments, and a building with a kitchen and two dining rooms, one for patients and one for employees. Next door was the administrative office, dental clinic, commissary and storerooms, a hospital to take care of those more seriously ill, and a clinic and treatment room. There was a laundry that could handle 200 pounds of laundry a day and a maintenance shop operated by patients. One of the most important components of the hospital was the recreation building where movies were shown and where patients hold dances and parties, play pool, and entertain friends.

As many as 150 patients lived at one time at Palo Seco. The lepers were allowed to eat at a mess the food prepared for them or to draw their ration uncooked and do their own cooking. If they wished to do any farming, implements and seeds were provided. The produce was purchased by the facility for the use of the colony. Similarly, they were allowed to raise chickens.

Today, Palo Seco sits more than half empty. Statues of saints stare at empty pews in the dusty chapel. Only eight Hansen's disease patients remain, joined by a handful of Alzheimers patients and physically disabled youth abandoned at hospitals by their parents.