The Barbary Plague

to 1895, is in the Blue Family collection at the South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia, S.C.

HIDING THE DEAD

1.­ Henri H. Mollaret and Jacqueline Brossollet, Alexandre Yersin, ou Le vainqueur de la peste (Paris: Librairie Artheme Fayard, 1985), p. 137.

2.­ Ibid., p. 142.

3.­ Personal communication, Dr. Elisabeth Carniel, director, National Yersiniosis and World Health Organization Collaborating Center of the Pasteur Institute.

4.­ See Guenter B. Risse, “ ‘A Long Pull, a Strong Pull, and All Together’: San Francisco and Bubonic Plague, 1907–1908,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 66 (Spring 1992): 264. Most doctors regarded clinical examination of physical symptoms as a more reliable way to diagnose illness. “[T]he new bacteriology, with its microscope slides, germ cultures, and selective inoculations of experimental animals, remained an alien world for most of California’s practitioners, trained in an earlier age.”

5.­ “The Monkey Is Dead,” Chung Sai Yat Po, March 14, 1900, p. 1.

6.­ Chinese Mortuary Records of the City and County of San Francisco, 1870–1933, National Archives and Records Administration, San Bruno, Calif., Cabinet 40, Drawer 9.

7.­ For another analysis of “yellow peril,” Chinese and Japanese discrimination, and school segregation, see Gray Brechin, Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), pp. 156–168.

8.­ “Mayor Phelan Puts Himself on Record,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 10, 1900.

9.­ Walter Wyman, Telegram to Surgeon Gassaway, March 8, 1900, NARA, San Bruno, Calif., Records Group 90, Quarantine Station, Angel Island, Calif., Series: Letters from Surgeon General to Medical Officer in Charge, July 1, 1891–July 1, 1918, Box 16, Folder, Volume 3.

10.­ Ibid.

11.­ J. A. Boyle, “How It Feels to Be Inoculated with Haffkine Serum,” San Francisco Examiner, May 31, 1900, p. 3.

12.­ Mildred Crowl Martin, Chinatown’s Angry Angel: The Story of Donaldina Cameron (Palo Alto, Calif.: Pacific Books, 1986), p. 78.

13.­ Ibid., pp. 58–61.

14.­ Ibid., pp. 77–78.

15.­ “Health Board Guarding the City Against the Plague,” San Francisco Examiner, March 13, 1900.

16.­ “Suspiciously Small Chinatown Death Rate,” San Francisco Examiner, March 18, 1900.

17.­ “Chinese Hide Their Sick from Officials,” San Francisco Examiner, March 24, 1900. See also Guenter B. Risse, “ ‘A Long Pull, a Strong Pull, and All Together’: San Francisco and Bubonic Plague, 1907–1908,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 66 (Spring 1992): 263.

18.­ W. G. Hay, M.D., “The Plague in Chinatown,” Occidental Medical Times, August 1900, pp. 251–253.

19.­ “Suspiciously Small Chinatown Death Rate,” San Francisco Examiner, March 18, 1900.

20.­ “In and Out of Kinyoun’s Quarantine,” San Francisco Examiner, March 16, 1900.

21.­ “Harassment Again,” Chung Sai Yat Po, March 24, 1900, p. 1.

22.­ Brechin, Imperial San Francisco, pp. 178–179.

23.­ Guenter Risse, “The Politics of Fear: Bubonic Plague in San Francisco, California, 1900,” New Countries and Old Medicine (Auckland, N.Z.: Pyramid Press, 1995), p. 9.

24.­ “City Plague Scare a Confessed Sham,” San Francisco Call, March 27, 1900, p. 1.

A NEW QUARANTINE

1.­ Death of the sixteen-year-old cigar maker Lim Fa Muey from bubonic plague is recorded in the “Chinese Mortuary Record of the City and County of San Francisco, State of California,” available on microfilm at the National Archives and Records Administration, Pacific Region, San Bruno, Calif. Dr. Kinyoun’s recovery of plague bacteria from her glands is reported in an article ironically titled “Investigating Experts Inspect Chinatown and Fail to Find a Single Case of Any Illness,” San Francisco Call, May 30, 1900, p. 1. Her symptoms listed here are those of classic bubonic plague as described by Charles T. Gregg, Plague: An Ancient Disease in the Twentieth Century (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985).

2.­ Affidavit of Minnie G. Worley, M.D., Jew Ho vs. John Williamson et al., U.S. Circuit Court for the Ninth Circuit, Northern District of California, NARA, San Bruno, Calif., Records Group 21, Old Circuit Court, Northern District of California, Common Law Civil Cases, Box 746, Folder 12,940.

3.­ Ibid.

4.­ Walter Wyman, Letter to the Hon. Wu Ti-Fang, May 15, 1900, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 636, 5608, Chinese Mortality 1897–1902, Folder 2 of 2. Although the government’s official letter is addressed to the Chinese envoy as Wu Ti-Fang, San Francisco Chinatown historian Him Mark Lai points out that his name was Wu Ting-Fang.

5.­ Surgeon General Walter Wyman, Telegram to Quarantine Officer Kinyoun, May 15, 1900, Wong Wai vs. Williamson, Case File No. 12,937, Records Group 21, Old Circuit Court, Civil Cases, NARA, San Bruno, Calif. See also Charles J. McClain, In Search of Equality: The Chinese Struggle Against Discrimination in Nineteenth-Century America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), p. 244.

6.­ Surgeon General Wyman, Telegram to Kinyoun, February 10, 1900: “Evidence has accumulated showing rats are chief means of conveying plague from port to port.” NARA, San Bruno, Calif., Records Group 90, Quarantine Station, Angel Island, Letters from Surgeon General to the Medical Officer in Charge, July 1, 1891 to July 1, 1918, Box 16, Vol. 3. The San Francisco Examiner, on May 18, 1900, published a story headlined FLEAS ARE CARRIERS OF THE PLAGUE; BACILLI FOUND IN INSECTS’ STOMACHS BY AUSTRALIAN DOCTORS. Apparently, nobody linked the clues.

7.­ Kinyoun, Letter to Dr. Bailhache, August 9, 1900, from the Joseph J. Kinyoun Manuscript Collection 464, History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Md., p. 5.

8.­ Thanks to Chinatown historian Him Mark Lai for his helpful interpretation of “wolf doctor.”

9.­ “The Reason for Immunization,” Chung Sai Yat Po, May 19, 1900, p. 1.

10.­ Mildred Crowl Martin recounts this scene in Chinatown’s Angry Angel: The Story of Donaldina Cameron (Palo Alto, Calif.: Pacific Books, 1986), p. 78, noting that the missionary attributed the fear of the shot to ignorance rather than well-taken objections to vaccine dangers.

11.­ “The Reason for Immunization,” Chung Sai Yat Po, May 19, 1900, p. 1.

12.­ “Interstate Quarantine Regulations to Prevent the Spread of Plague in the United States,” May 22, 1900, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 636, File 5608, Chinese Mortality 1897–1902, File 2 of 2. See also Guenter B. Risse, “ ‘A Long Pull, a Strong Pull, and All Together’: San Francisco and Bubonic Plague, 1907– 1908,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 66 (Spring 1992): 265. See also Wong Wai vs. John M. Williamson et al., NARA, San Bruno,