1. Personal communication, Bob Browning, U.S. Coast Guard historian, Washington, D.C., and Wayne Wheeler, president of the U.S. Lighthouse Society, San Francisco.
2. Gray Brechin, Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), pp. 126–127.
3. Ibid., pp. 274–279.
4. More San Francisco Memoirs, 1852–1899: The Ripening Years, ed. Malcolm E. Barker (San Francisco: Londonborn Publications, 1996), pp. 269 and 225–226. (The English novelist Anthony Trollope was unimpressed. “There is almost nothing in San Francisco that is worth seeing,” he said. “There is an inferior menagerie of wild beasts, and a place called the Cliff house to which strangers are taken to hear seals bark.” He added that the only noteworthy city feature was its stock exchange, which he pronounced even more “demoniac” than the one in Paris.)
5. Ibid., pp. 265–269.
6. Ibid., pp. 207–217.
7. For the flavor of immigrant life, see Marlon K. Hom, Songs of Gold Mountain: Cantonese Rhymes from San Francisco Chinatown (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).
8. Barker, ed., More San Francisco Memoirs, pp. 237–239.
9. George Rathmell, Realms of Gold: The Colorful Writers of San Francisco, 1850–1950 (Berkeley: Creative Arts Book Co., 1998), pp. 174–176.
10. Philip P. Choy, Lorraine Dong, and Marlon K. Hom, The Coming Man (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995), p. 85.
11. Ibid., p. 92.
12. Joan B. Trauner, “The Chinese as Medical Scapegoats in San Francisco, 1870–1905,” California History 57, no. 1 (Spring 1978): 70–87 (published by the California Historical Society).
13. “The hoodlum is a distinctive San Francisco product,” wrote a writer for Scribner’s named Samuel Williams. “One of his chief diversions when he is in a more pleasant mood and at peace with the world at large, is stoning Chinamen.” Other etymologists trace the word to a mispronunciation of the Bavarian word hodalump, or the Irish noodlum, a corruption of the surname Muldoon. See Barker, ed., More San Francisco Memoirs, pp. 228–231.
14. Charles F. Adams, The Magnificent Rogues of San Francisco (Palo Alto: Pacific Books, 1998), p. 196.
15. “Wing Chung Knew the Game, But a ‘Tin Roof’ Came High,” San Francisco Examiner, May 13, 1900.
16. Rathmell, Realms of Gold, pp. 77–78.
17. Harriet Lane Levy, 920 O’Farrell Street: A Jewish Girlhood in Old San Francisco (Berkeley, Calif.: Heyday Books, 1996), pp. 144–145.
18. Report of the Special Committee on the Condition of the Chinese Quarter, San Francisco Municipal Reports for the Fiscal Year 1884–1885, published by order of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (San Francisco: W. M. Hinton & Co., 1885). Thanks to the Reverend Harry Chuck, Donaldina Cameron House, San Francisco, Calif., for sharing this document.
19. Bess Furman, A Profile of the United States Public Health Service, 1798–1948 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1973), pp. 230–231.
20. “Why San Francisco Is Plague-Proof,” San Francisco Examiner Sunday Magazine, February 4, 1900.
21. Vernon B. Link, “A History of Plague in the United States,” Public Health Monograph no. 26 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Public Health Service, 1955).
22. Quarantine Officer Joseph Kinyoun thought the Australia was likely to have been the ship that introduced the plague that caused the March 1900 outbreak in San Francisco. See Joseph J. Kinyoun, Letter to Dr. Bailhache, August 9, 1900, p. 16, Joseph J. Kinyoun Manuscript Collection 1860–1913, Ms. C. 464, History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Md. For descriptions and photos of the Australia, thanks to the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park Library.
1. “Old Year Tooted Out, and the New One Noisily Welcomed,” San Francisco Chronicle, January 1, 1900, p. 12.
2. Theodora Lau, The Handbook of Chinese Horoscopes (New York: Perennial Library, 1988), pp. 35–48.
3. Charles T. Gregg, Plague: An Ancient Disease in the Twentieth Century (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985), p. 171.
4. “The Story of Wong Chut King,” Chung Sai Yat Po, March 8, 1900, translated by Prisca Hui. (Readers should note that the name of Wong Chut King varies in English-language newspaper accounts as Wing Chut King or Chick Gin, reflecting different pronunciations and transliterations. Regarding his village and district, Chinatown historian Him Mark Lai notes that speakers from Canton mingle their “n” and “l” sounds, so Ling Yup should be Ning Yup, short for Sunning district. The village of Pei Hang is a mingling of Cantonese and Mandarin. In this village, also known as Bak Hang, Wong was the dominant surname.)
5. Marlon K. Hom, Songs of Gold Mountain: Cantonese Rhymes from San Francisco Chinatown (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), pp. 308–322.
6. Descriptions of the pathology of plague and the progression of patients from infection to death, recounted by Gregg in Plague, pp. 113–128.
7. “The Story of Wong Chut King,” Chung Sai Yat Po, March 8, 1900, p. 1. For explaining the significance of coffin shops and the meaning of sau pan po, or long-life boards, I am indebted to translator Prisca Hui. Historian Him Mark Lai adds his insight on cultural meanings of coffins and burial. Sau pan or sau baan means coffin, literally a longevity board. “Po” means store. He adds a better term might be Cheung Sang Po, which denotes a store for both long life and coffins.
8. “Quarantine of Chinatown,” Chung Sai Yat Po, March 7, 1900, p. 1. Translated by Prisca Hui.
9. “Burning of Dead Body,” Chung Sai Yat Po, March 21, 1900, p. 2. Translated by Prisca Hui.
10. “The Story of Wong Chut King,” Chung Sai Yat Po, March 8, 1900, p. 1. Translated by Prisca Hui.
11. “No Results from Tests of Bacteriologist… Chinese Merchants Will Seek to Enjoin the Maintenance of Quarantine,” San Francisco Examiner, March 9, 1900.
1. Joseph J. Kinyoun, Letter to Dr. Bailhache, August 9, 1900, p. 41. Letters of Joseph J. Kinyoun, Ms. C. 464, History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Md.
2. Mrs. John Hendricks Kinyoun, Letter to “My Dear Husband,” December 29, 1861, John Hendricks Kinyoun Papers, Genealogy Series, Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University.
3. John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, American National Biography, vol. 12 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 736.
4. John Hendricks Kinyoun Papers, Genealogy Series, Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University.
5. Garraty and Carnes, American National Biography, vol. 12, p. 736.
6. Bess Furman, A Profile of the United States Public Health Service, 1798–1948 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1973), p. 279.
7. Program, Complimentary Dinner to Joseph J. Kinyoun, Ms. C. 464, History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Md.
8. Joseph J. Kinyoun, Letter to “My Dear Aunt and Uncle,” June 29, 1901, Joseph J. Kinyoun Manuscript Collection, Ms. C. 464, History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Md., pp. 1–2.
9. Joseph J. Kinyoun, Letter to Dr. Bailhache, Joseph J. Kinyoun Manuscript Collection, Ms. C. 464, History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Md., pp. 1–2.
10. Ibid., p. 27.
11. Ibid., p. 23.
12. Ibid., p. 50.
13. Ibid., pp. 1, 69.
14. Ibid., 50–51.
15. Ibid., pp. 16–17.
16. Joseph Kinyoun, Letter to Supervising Surgeon General, March 5, 1900, National Archives and Records Administration, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 627, Folder 5608, Folder January– May 1900, J. J. Kinyoun.
17. Kinyoun, Undated Telegram to Supervising Surgeon General, NARA, San Bruno, Calif., RG 90 (Public Health Service), Quarantine Station, Angel Island, Calif., Letters from the Surgeon General to the Medical Officer in Charge, July 1, 1891–July 1, 1918, Box 16, Vol. 3.
18. Charles T. Gregg, Plague: An Ancient Disease in the Twentieth Century (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985), pp. 40–41.
19. “Quarantine of Chinatown Raised, All Fears Proving Groundless,” San Francisco Examiner, March 10, 1900.
1. Rupert Blue, Letter to Supervising Surgeon General, June 27, 1900, National Archives and Records Administration, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 616, Folder 3 of 3.
2. David T. Dennis, Kenneth L. Gage, et al., Plague Manual: Epidemiology, Distribution, Surveillance and Control (Geneva: World Health Organization, 1999), pp. 12–13.
3. Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, translated by Guido Waldman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 12–13.
4. Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year (London: Penguin Classics, 1986), pp. 27–28.
5. Philip Ziegler, The Black Death (Surrey, Eng.: Sutton Publishing Ltd., Bramley Books, Quadrillion Publishing Ltd., 1998), pp. 53–55.
6. Ibid., p. 37.
7. Major Arthur Henry Moorhead, “Plague in India,” The Military Surgeon, March 1908, as cited in Frank Morton Todd, Eradicating Plague from San Francisco (San Francisco: C. Murdock and Co., 1909), p. 283.
8. W. W. Sellers, A History of Marion County, South Carolina (Columbia, S.C.: R. L. Bryan Co., 1902), p. 132.
9. Kate Lilly Blue, “Marion Men Lead Reconstruction,” News and Courier, Charleston, S.C., March 11, 1934. South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia, S.C.
10. Kate Lilly Blue, Historical Sketches of Marion County and Other Articles, SC R 975.757 Scrapbook Blu, Marion County, S.C., Public Library, South Carolina Room.
11. Personal communication of Miss Elizabeth McIntyre, one of Marion’s venerable citizens, and Mr. Tommy Lett, curator of the Marion Museum, regarding the town’s history and culture, during a reporting trip there in the summer of 2000.
12. Ibid.
13. Kate Lilly Blue, Letter to her cousin Theo, July 19, 1948. Blue Family Collection, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia, S.C.
14. Kate Lilly Blue, Letter to her cousin Mary, April 30, 1943. Blue Family Collection, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia, S.C.
15. Rupert Blue, Letter to Kate Lilly Blue, Latta, S.C., October 23, 1888. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.
16. Letters of John Gilchrist Blue, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia, S.C.
17. Details about the last illness and death of John Gilchrist Blue are drawn from at least four sources: Obituary of John Gilchrist Blue and Letters of Victor Blue and John Gilchrist Blue, found in the Blue Family Collection, the South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina at Columbia. See also Letters of Rupert Blue to Kate Lilly Blue from collection of J. Michael Hughes, and W. W. Sellers, A History of Marion County, South Carolina (Columbia, S.C.: R. L. Bryan Co., 1902), p. 131.
18. Rupert Blue, Letter to Kate Lilly Blue, Albemarle Co., Va., October 27, 1889. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.
19. Rupert Blue, Letter to Kate Blue, Baltimore, Md., February 8, 1892. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.
20. Ibid., December 13, 1891. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.
21. Ibid., April 16, 1892. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.
22. Ibid., May 20, 1892. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.
23. Rupert Blue, Letter to Mrs. Annie M. Blue, December 16, 1910. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.
24. Reports of M. J. Rosenau and John Godfrey, Marine Hospital Service, Department of Health and Human Services, 1895–1896, Personnel Files of Rupert Blue, Division of Commissioned Personnel, Rockville, Md.
25. Letter of Rupert Blue to Kate Lilly Blue, Genoa, Italy, April 18, 1900. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.
26. Ibid., Norfolk, Va., January 24, 1906. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.
27. Regulations Governing Uniforms of Officers and Employees of the United States Marine Hospital Service, Treasury Department, Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office, 1893 and 1896 editions. Courtesy of U.S. Public Health Service Historian Dr. John Parascandola.
28. Thanks to U.S. Public Health Service historian John Parascandola for helpful discussions on the symbolism of the uniform.
29. This undated portrait of Rupert Blue in his Marine Hospital Service dress uniform, probably taken c. 1892 to 1895, is in the Blue Family collection at the South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia, S.C.
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.
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, Calif., Records Group 21, No. 12,937.
13. Wong Wai vs. John M. Williamson et al., in the United States Circuit Court, Ninth Circuit, Northern District of California, NARA, San Bruno, Calif., Records Group 21, No. 12,937.
14. McClain, In Search of Equality, p. 254.
15. Opinion in Wong Wai vs. John M. Williamson et al., NARA, San Bruno, Calif., Records Group 21, No. 12,937.
16. “Board of Health Confesses to a Famous Expert That There Is No Bubonic Plague in This City,” San Francisco Call, May 29, 1900, p. 2.
17. “Cordon of City Police Is Drawn Around Chinatown,” San Francisco Examiner, May 30, 1900, p. 3.
18. Joseph Kinyoun, Letter to Dr. Bailhache, National Library of Medicine, p. 36.
19. “Investigating Experts Inspect Chinatown and Fail to Find a Single Case of Any Illness,” San Francisco Call, May 30, 1900, p. 1.
20. Letter to Dr. Bailhache, Kinyoun Letters, National Library of Medicine, pp. 37–38.
21. “Sporadic Case of Bubonic Plague Discovered, but There Is Absolutely No Need for Alarm,” San Francisco Call, May 31, 1900, p. 1.
22. “Autopsy of Dang Hong,” Chung Sai Yat Po, May 30, 1900, p. 2.
23. “Danger of Plague Has Passed and Vigilance Will Ensure Complete Safety to the City,” San Francisco Call, June 1, 1900, p. 2.
24. “Dr. Shrady Dined by Mayor Phelan,” San Francisco Call, June 3, 1900.
25. Joseph J. Kinyoun, Letter to “My Dear Aunt and Uncle,” June 29, 1901. From the Joseph J. Kinyoun, Manuscript Collection 464, History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, p. 8¾.
26. “San Francisco Free from Danger of Contagion,” San Francisco Call, June 2, 1900, p. 1.
27. Letter to Dr. Bailhache, Kinyoun Letters, National Library of Medicine, p. 38.
1. “Health Board Vents Animus on Pillsbury,” San Francisco Call, June 3, 1900.
2. Jew Ho vs. John M. Williamson et al., National Archives and Records Administration, San Bruno, Calif., Records Group 21, U.S. District Court, Old Circuit Court, Northern District of California, Common Law Civil Cases, Box 746, Folder 12,940.
3. “Signs of Riot Among the Chinese in Quarantine,” San Francisco Call, June 8, 1900.
4. “Officials Investigating the Chinese Blackmail Scandal,” San Francisco Call, June 10, 1900, p. 1.
5. Ibid.
6. “Riot Raised Among Quarantined Chinese,” San Francisco Call, June 12, 1900.
7. “Another Hearing of Lawsuit,” Chung Sai Yat Po, June 14, 1900.
8. “De Haven Strikes First Blow at the Quarantine,” San Francisco Call, June 13, 1900.
9. “No Plague Says Governor Gage,” San Francisco Call, June 14, 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): 266.
10. Jew Ho vs. John M. Williamson et al.
11. Ibid.
12. “Chinatown Quarantine Raised by Order of Federal Court,” San Francisco Examiner, June 16, 1900. For a legal analysis of the importance of the quarantine, Wong Wai, and Jew Ho cases, see also Charles McClain, In Search of Equality: The Chinese Struggle Against Discrimination in Nineteenth-Century America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), pp. 234–276.
13. J. J. Kinyoun, Telegram to Pacific Coast Steamship Company, June 15, 1900, cited in Wong Wai vs. John M. Williamson et al., NARA, Records Group 21, U.S. District Court, Old Circuit Court, Northern District of California, Common Law Civil Cases, Box 746, Folder 12,937.
14. J. J. Kinyoun, Telegram to Surgeon General Wyman, June 16, 1900, NARA, Records Group 90, Box 627, Folder June 1900, J. J. Kinyoun.
15. J. J. Kinyoun, Telegram to State Board of Health of Louisiana, June 15, 1900, as cited in Wong Wai vs. John M. Williamson et al., NARA, San Bruno, Calif., Records Group 21, U.S. District Court, Old Circuit Court, Northern District of California, Common Law Civil Cases, Box 746, Folder 12,937.
16. Republican State Central Committee of California, Telegram to President McKinley, qtd. in “California Is Subjected to an Unparalleled Outrage,” San Francisco Call, June 17, 1900, p. 23.
17. “Kinyoun Begs for Mercy in Court,” San Francisco Call, June 18, 1900, p. 10.
18. “President McKinley Answers Appeal of State and Raises Kinyoun Quarantine,” San Francisco Call, June 19, 2000, p. 5.
19. Joseph J. Kinyoun, Letter to Dr. Bailhache, August 9, 1900, Joseph J. Kinyoun Manuscript Collection, Ms. 464, in History of Medicine Collection, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Md., p. 9.
20. Excerpts of testimony are from Transcript of Kinyoun’s Contempt Hearing in Wong Wai vs. John M. Williamson et al., June 25–July 2, 1900, NARA, San Bruno, Calif., Records Group 21, U.S. District Court, Old Circuit Court, Northern District of California, Common Law Civil Cases, Box 746, Folder 12,937.
21. Rupert Blue, Letter to the Supervising Surgeon General, June 27, 1900, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 616, File 3 of 3.
22. The children’s dinner discussion is recounted in Kinyoun’s Letter to Dr. Bailhache, Kinyoun Ms. C. 464, History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Md., p. 17.
23. “Kinyoun Purged of Contempt by Circuit Court,” San Francisco Call, July 4, 1900.
24. The conference on the ferry boat is also recounted in Kinyoun’s Letter to Dr. Bailhache, Kinyoun Ms. C. 464, History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Md., p. 11.
25. “Oust the Fakers,” San Francisco Call, June 26, 1900, p. 6.
1. Details of William Murphy’s case come from several sources: His alleged opium addiction was reported in the Sacramento Bee, January 12, 1901, p. 1. His diagnosis with plague at autopsy comes from Kinyoun’s letter to Dr. Bailhache, Joseph J. Kinyoun Manuscript Collection, Ms. C. 464, History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Md., p. 14.
2. J. J. Kinyoun, Letter to Dr. Bailhache, Joseph J. Kinyoun Manuscript Collection, Ms. C. 464, History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Md., p. 14.
3. Ibid., pp. 53–55.
4. Ibid., p. 53.
5. Ibid., p. 20.
6. James Moloney, surgeon of the SS Coptic, Letter to the Surgeon in Charge, U.S. Marine Hospital Service, San Francisco, September 30, 1900, National Archives and Records Administration, Records Group 90, Box 627, Folder June 1900, J. J. Kinyoun.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. J. J. Kinyoun, Letter to the Surgeon General, October 10, 1900, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Box 627, Folder June 1900, J. J. Kinyoun.
10. J. J. Kinyoun, Letter to Dr. Bailhache, pp. 18–19.
11. J. J. Kinyoun, Letter to Surgeon General, December 29, 1900, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Box 627, Folder June 1900, J. J. Kinyoun.
12. “Dr. Kinyoun May Move His Drugs to Other Parts,” San Francisco Call, December 20, 1900.
13. “Dr. Kinyoun May Soon Be Transferred,” San Francisco Call, December 22, 1900.
14. Wong Chung, Letter to Dr. Kinyoun, December 18, 1900, and the complaint of Wong Chung vs. J. J. Kinyoun et al., both found in NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Box 627, Folder 5608, 1901, J. J. Kinyoun.
15. J. J. Kinyoun, Letter to the Surgeon General of December 6, 1900, as cited in Letter to Dr. Bailhache, p. 75.
16. “Commercial Outlook,” San Francisco Call, December 31, 1900, p. 6.
17. Kinyoun, Letter to Dr. Bailhache, p. 68.
18. “The Doom of Kinyoun,” San Francisco Chronicle, December 28, 1900, editorial page (from NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Box 627, Folder June 1900, J. J. Kinyoun).
19. Kinyoun, Letter to Dr. Bailhache, p. 68.
20. “Plague Is the Burden of the Governor’s Message,” Sacramento Bee, January 9, 1901, pp. 2–4. Emphasis added.
21. Ibid.
22. “State Senate Demands Dr. Kinyoun’s Removal,” San Francisco Call, January 24, 1901.
23. Joseph J. Kinyoun, Letter to “My Dear Aunt and Uncle,” June 29, 1901. From the Joseph J. Kinyoun Manuscript Collection, Ms. C. 464, in the History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Md., p. 25.
24. J. J. Kinyoun, Telegram to Supervising Surgeon General, January 10, 1901, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Box 627, Folder 5608, 1901, J. J. Kinyoun.
25. Joseph J. Kinyoun, Letter to “My Dear Aunt and Uncle,” Detroit, Mich., June 29, 1901, National Library of Medicine, p. 26.
26. “Scathing Arraignment by Dr. Williamson,” Sacramento Bee, January 16, 1901, p. 4.
27. Lewellys F. Barker, Time and the Physician (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1942), pp. 82–83.
28. J. H. White attributes the eviction from the lab to the university president, in Telegram to Surgeon General Wyman, February 4, 1901, NARA, Records Group 90, Box 625, Folder 5608, File 3 of 4. Kinyoun cites the threat of lost funding for the action in his letter to “My Dear Aunt and Uncle,” p. 28. Kinyoun Manuscript Collection, Ms. C. 464, History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, p. 28.
29. Special Commission on Plague, Letter to Surgeon General Wyman, NARA, College Park, Md. Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 637, Folder 1899–1909, Surgeon General.
30. “Federal Plague Commission Has Practically Finished,” Sacramento Bee, February 18, 1901, p. 1.
31. “Gage in the Dumps over That ‘Conference,’ ” Sacramento Bee, February 19, 1901, p. 2, col. 4.
32. “More Pressure upon M’Kinley,” Sacramento Bee, February 28, 1901, p. 1.
33. Joseph Kinyoun, Telegram to Surgeon General, March 1, 1901, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 627, Folder 5608, File 1901, J. J. Kinyoun.
34. J. H. White, Letter to “Dear Dr.,” February 26, 1901, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 625, Folder 5608, File 3 of 4.
35. Ibid., March 7, 1901, NARA, Records Group 90, Box 625, Folder 5608, File 3 of 4.
1. Telegram of Geo. C. Perkins and Thos. R. Bard, Febuary 20, 1901, for information of Gen. O. L. Spaulding, Assistant Treasury Secretary, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 636, Folder 5608, Chinese Mortality 1897–1902, Conference ’02–’03, Memoranda ’01–’03, Autopsies ’02–’03.
2. Geo. C. Perkins, Letter to Hon O. L. Spaulding, Assistant Treasury Secretary, February 21, 1901, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 636, Folder 5608, Chinese Mortality 1897–1902, Conference ’02–’03, Memoranda ’01–’03, Autopsies ’02–’03.
3. Walter Wyman, Personal and Confidential Letter to Doctor Victor Vaughan, February 20, 1901, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 636, Folder 5608, Chinese Mortality 1897–1902, File 2 of 2. Wyman wrote:
Dear Doctor Vaughan,
I telegraphed you today, asking you to use your efforts to prevent publication of any information that might reach Ann Arbor concerning work of Commission in San Francisco, out of superabundant caution, having no reason to suppose at all that the seal of silence will be broken by any of the commission. Yet inferences might be drawn from their work and I know that the Associated Press in Ann Arbor is very active. The object of silence is for the purpose of bringing the Governor around to work with us, which will be more difficult if the matter is made public. With regards, Sincerely Yours, WALTER WYMAN, Surgeon-General, Marine Hospital Service.
4. “Bubonic Plague Exists in San Francisco and Probably in Other Cities on the Coast,” Sacramento Bee, March 6, 1901, p. 1.
5. “Infamous Compact Signed by Wyman,” Sacramento Bee, March 16, 1901, p. 1, col. 3.
6. “Bubonic Plague ‘News’ Comes from Washington,” Sacramento Bee, March 11, 1901, p. 8, col. 4.
7. J. J. Kinyoun, Telegram to Supervising Surgeon General, March 9, 1901, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 627, Folder 5608, 1901, J. J. Kinyoun.
8. Walter Wyman, Telegram to Surgeon Kinyoun, March 11, 1901, NARA, San Bruno, Calif., Records Group 90, Subgroup Quarantine Station, Angel Island, Calif. Series Letters from the Surgeon General to the Medical Officer in Charge, Accession, July 1, 1891, to July 1, 1918, Box 16, Vol. 4.
9. J. H. White, Letter to “Dear Doctor,” March 7, 1901, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 625, Folder 5608, File 3 of 4.
10. Ibid., March 19, 1901, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box, 625, Folder 5608, File 3 of 4.
11. Letter of Lewellys F. Barker to “My Dear Dr. Wyman,” April 6, 1901, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 637, Folder 1899–1909, Surgeon General.
12. Letter of Lewellys F. Barker, to “My Dear Dr. Wyman,” April 11, 1901, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 637, Folder 1899–1909, Surgeon General.
13. Lewellys F. Barker, Time and the Physician (New York: G. P. Putman’s Sons, 1942), p. 114.
14. F. G. Novy, Telegram to Surgeon General Wyman, April 5, 1901, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 637, Folder 5608, 1899–1909, Surgeon General. See also F. G. Novy, Letter to Surgeon General Wyman, with attached case report written for Journal of the American Medical Association, April 9, 1901, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 637, Folder 1899–1909, Surgeon General. See also Howard Markel, “Prescribing ‘Arrowsmith,’ ” New York Times, September 24, 2000, for impact of the Hare case on Sinclair Lewis’s novel.
15. Charles T. Gregg, Plague: An Ancient Disease in the Twentieth Century (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985), pp. 90–91.
16. Walter Wyman, Letter to J. J. Kinyoun, April 6, 1901, NARA, San Bruno, Calif., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Subgroup Quarantine Station, Angel Island, Calif., Series: Letters from the Surgeon General to the Medical Officer in Charge, July 1, 1891–July 1, 1918, Box 16, Vol. 4.
17. J. J. Kinyoun, Letter to “My Dear Aunt and Uncle,” from the Joseph J. Kinyoun (1860–1913) Manuscript Collection, Ms. C. 464, in the History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Md., pp. 32, 34.
18. “Truth Suppression and Not Plague Suppression,” Sacramento Bee, April 22, 1901, p. 4, col. 3.
19. “Kinyoun Says He Is Falsely Accused,” Sacramento Bee, May 6, 1901, p. 5, col. 6.
20. J. J. Kinyoun, Letter to “My Dear Aunt and Uncle,” June 29, 1901, from the J. J. Kinyoun papers, Ms. C. 464, in the History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Md, p. 40. For an analysis of Kinyoun’s downfall, 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): “Kinyoun… became the target of a systematic campaign of vituperation and was denounced as an enemy of San Francisco.”
21. J. J. Kinyoun, Letter to “Dear Doctor Bailhache,” August 9, 1900, Joseph J. Kinyoun, Ms. C. 464, History of Medicine Collection, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Md., p. 61.
1. J. H. White, Letter to “Dear Doctor,” April 18, 1901, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 625, Folder 5608, File 3 of 4.
2. “Colorado’s Quarantine Still Maintained,” Sacramento Bee, March 28, 1901.
3. “Plague Report at Last Sees the Light of Day,” Sacramento Bee, April 15, 1901. White protests that he wasn’t the source of the leak in his “Dear Doctor” letter cited above. Dr. Barker wrote Surgeon General Wyman asking for copies of the official report in a letter of April 27, 1901, located at NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 637, Folder 1899–1909, Surgeon General.
4. M. J. White, Letter to Surgeon J. H. White, April 23, 1901, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 625, Folder 5608, File 3 of 4.
5. J. H. White, Letter to Dr. Wyman, April 24, 1901, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 625, Folder 5608, File 2 of 4.
6. J. H. White, Personal Letter to Surgeon General Walter Wyman, April 30, 1901, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 625, Folder 5608, 2 of 4.
7. J. H. White, Letter to “Dear Doctor,” May 10, 1901, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 625, Folder 5608, File 2 of 4.
8. J. H. White, Telegram to Wyman, May 4, 1901, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 625, Folder 5608, File 3 of 4.
9. J. H. White, Letter to “Dear Doctor,” May 10, 1901, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 625, Folder 5608, File 2 of 4.
10. J. H. White, Letter to “His Excellency Henry T. Gage, Governor of the State of California,” May 18, 1901, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 624, Folder 2 of 2.
11. J. H. White, Letter to Supervising Surgeon General, May 29, 1901, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File (1897–1923), Box 624, File 2 of 2.
12. Ibid.
13. J. H. White, Personal Letter to Surgeon General Walter Wyman, April 30, 1901, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 625, Folder 5608, File 2 of 4.
14. “McKinley Reaches City, Not as President, but as Devoted Husband, Solicitous for the Welfare of His Beloved Wife,” San Francisco Call, May 13, 1901.
15. Details of the McKinleys’ visit to San Francisco made headlines for two weeks, including these details from the San Francisco Call, May 13–26, 1901.
16. Rupert Blue, Letter to Supervising Surgeon General, July 2, 1901, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 616, File 3 of 3.
17. Walter Wyman, Letter to Henry T. Gage, July 5, 1901, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 624, File 2 of 2.
18. H. Ryfkogel, Letter to Drs. Regensburger, Carpenter, Evans, Dodge, and Kurozawa, July 8, 1901, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 627, Folder 5608, 1901, J. J. Kinyoun.
19. Autopsy Number 63: Miyo, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 625, Folder 5608, File 2 of 4.
20. Autopsy Number 64: Shina, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 625, Folder 5608, File 2 of 4.
21. Rupert Blue, Telegram to Surgeon General Wyman, July 10, 1901, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 616, File 3 of 3.
22. “Deaths of Two Prostitutes in Chinatown Suspected of Having Plague,” Chung Sai Yat Po, July 12, 1901.
23. Rupert Blue, Letter to Surgeon General, July 20, 1901, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 616, File 3 of 3.
24. Rupert Blue, Personal Letter to Surgeon General Wyman, July 11, 1901, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 616, File 3 of 3.
25. Rupert Blue, Letter to Surgeon General Walter Wyman, July 25, 1901, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Box 616, File 3 of 3.
26. “Striking Teamsters Go on the Warpath,” San Francisco Call, August 29, 1901, p. 1.
27. M. J. White, Letter to Surgeon General, September 3, 1901, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 625, File 2 of 4.
28. “State Will Pay Coin for ‘Shadowing’ Work,” San Francisco Call, September 6, 1901, and “What Ryfkogel Thinks of Gage,” San Francisco Call, September 7, 1901. These one-hundred-year-old clippings on the case were attached to federal public health service plague files with a handwritten note in the margin: “Wouldn’t this jar you?” NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 616, File 3 of 3.
1. Rupert Blue, Personal Letter to General Walter Wyman, September 25, 1901, National Archives and Records Administration, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 616, File 3 of 3.
2. Marlon K. Hom, Songs of Gold Mountain: Cantonese Rhymes from San Francisco Chinatown (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), p. 29.
3. M. J. White, Letter to the Surgeon General, September 14, 1901, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 625, Folder 5608, File 2 of 4.
4. Rupert Blue, Letter to the Surgeon General, September 23, 1901, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 616, File 3 of 3.
5. Rupert Blue, Personal Letter to Surgeon General Walter Wyman, September 25, 1901, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 616, File 3 of 3.
6. Rupert Blue, Letter to Supervising Surgeon General, October 4, 1901, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 616, File 3 of 3.
7. Henri H. Mollaret and Jacqueline Brossolet, Alexandre Yersin, ou Le vainqueur de la peste (Paris: Librairie Artheme Fayard, 1985), p. 165.
8. The Bubonic Plague, a monograph by Walter Wyman, surgeon general, Marine Hospital Service (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1900), pp. 25–26.
1. Rupert Blue, Personal Letter to Surgeon General Wyman, September 29, 1901, National Archives and Records Administration, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 616, File 3 of 3.
2. M. J. White, Letter to Passed Assistant Surgeon Rupert Blue, September 27, 1901, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 616, File 3 of 3.
3. Rupert Blue, Personal Letter to Walter Wyman, October 18, 1901, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 616, File 3 of 3.
4. The birth of the Ruef-Schmitz alliance is recounted by Walton Bean in Boss Ruef’s San Francisco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1952), pp. 20–21. It is also treated by Charles F. Adams in The Magnificent Rogues of San Francisco (Palo Alto: Pacific Books, 1998), pp. 222–246.
5. “Crowds Cheer for Schmitz,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 6, 1901, p. 2.
6. Bean, Boss Ruef’s San Francisco, p. 29.
7. Mark White, Letters to the Supervising Surgeon General, on December 23, 1901, and December 30, 1901, and Telegram of January 13, 1902, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 625, Folders 5608, 5624, and 5608.
8. “Big House to See Sponge Thrown Up; Once More San Francisco Pays Dear for Witnessing an Easy Money Game,” San Francisco Chronicle, sports page, November 16, 1901.
9. Bess Furman, A Profile of the United States Public Health Service, 1798–1948 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1973). The late Bess Furman interviewed Surgeon General Blue’s secretary and contemporaries. Her cryptic handwritten notes on this exchange are filed at the National Library of Medicine, in Bethesda, Md. (Ms. C. 202, HMD Manuscripts, NLM012683199, Furman, Bess, 1894–1969, project materials pertaining to a history of the U.S. Public Health Service, Box 16, Chapters 12–13, steno pad).
10. “Chinese Go East to Lecture and Sing Against Exclusion,” San Francisco Examiner, December 5, 1901, p. 6, col. 1.
11. “Exclude Chinese, Build Up the Navy—Roosevelt,” San Francisco Examiner, December 4, 1901, p. 3, col. 1.
12. “Some Scientific Prophecies,” San Francisco Examiner, New Year’s Supplement, January 1, 1902, p. 3, col. 1.
13. M. J. White, Letter to the Surgeon General, April 22, 1902, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 624, File 1 of 2.
14. “Mayor Schmitz Removes Four Members of Board of Health,” San Francisco Examiner, March 26, 1902, p. 1.
15. Affidavit of Wong Chung, May 19, 1902, and M. J. White, Letters to Supervising Surgeon General, May 20 and 21, 1901, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 624, File 2 of 2.
16. M. J. White, Letter to the Surgeon General, May 22, 1902, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 624, Folder 5608, File 1 of 2.
17. H. Brett Melendy and Benjamin F. Gilbert, The Governors of California (Georgetown, Calif.: Talisman Press, 1965), pp. 270–274.
18. M. J. White, Letter to Surgeon General, May 30, 1902, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 624, File 2 of 2.
19. M. J. White details the deaths of the seventeen-year-old boy and the cook Huie Chong Bow in two letters to the surgeon general, both dated September 24, 1902, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 624, File 1 of 2.
20. M. J. White, Telegram to Surgeon General Wyman, October 7, 1902, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 624, File 2 of 2.
21. M. J. White, Letter to the Surgeon General, October 8, 1902, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 624, File 2 of 2.
22. John Hay, Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury, October 11, 1902, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 624, File 2 of 2.
1. Resolutions of the State and Provincial Boards of Health of North America at the Annual Meeting held at New Haven, October 28–29, 1902, National Archives and Records Administration, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 636, Folder 5608, File 1 of 2.
2. M. J. White, Letter to Surgeon General, October 29, 1902, NARA, Records Group 90, Box 624, File 2 of 2. Caswell’s death and his intemperate habits are noted in “List of Cases of Plague” in San Francisco, Calif., from March 6, 1900, to December 11, 1902, filed at NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 616, File 2 of 2.
3. A. H. Glennan, Letter to the Surgeon General, October 21, 1902, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 626, Folder 5608, 1902, Surgeon Glennan. Glennan recaps his audience with the governor in this letter, expressing shock at the governor’s crude eruptions, and bowdlerized his outburst as “That plague again.”
4. M. J. White, Letter to the Surgeon General, September 12, 1902, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 624, File 1 of 2.
5. The account of this meeting is from M. J. White’s Letter to the Surgeon General of November 4, 1902, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 624, File 2 of 2.
6. “Plague Fake Is Exposed; Dr. Glennan Says Bubonic Tales Are False,” San Francisco Call, December 12, 1902, p. 1 col. 1.
7. Bess Furman, A Profile of the United States Public Health Service, 1798–1948 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1973), pp. 251–252.
8. Walter Wyman, Letter to Edmond Souchon, January 11, 1903, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 636, Folder 5608, File 1 of 2.
9. A. H. Glennan, “Dear General” Letter to Wyman, January 14, 1903, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 616, File 1 of 3.
10. “The Plague Conference Held at Washington, D.C., January 19, 1903,” American Medicine, January 31, 1903, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 624, File 1 of 2.
11. Walter Wyman, Telegram to A. H. Glennan, January 28, 1903, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 636, Folder 5608, Chinese Mortality, ’97–’02, File 2 of 2.
12. A. H. Glennan, Telegram to Surgeon General Wyman, January 29, 1903, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 636, Folder 5608, Chinese Mortality, ’97–’02, File 2 of 2.
1. Rupert Blue, Letter to Miss Kate Blue, January 31, 1903, Collection of J. Michael Hughes.
2. A. H. Glennan, Letter to the Surgeon General, February 12, 1903, National Archives and Records Administration, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 626, Folder 5608, 1903, Glennan.
3. Rupert Blue, entry of February 15, 1903, in the Plague Journal 1901–1905, of Drs. Currie, Blue, et al., National Library of Medicine.
4. “Chinese Complain of Unsanitary Conditions,” San Francisco Examiner, April 5, 1903, p. 28, col. 7, and “Legal Obstruction to Chinatown Cleaning,” San Francisco Examiner, April 7, 1903, p. 6, col. 2.
5. Rupert Blue, Letter to the Surgeon General, July 23, 1903, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 616, File 1 of 2.
6. Rupert Blue to Walter Wyman, August 17, 1903, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 616, File 1 of 3.
7. “Only Chinatown’s Removal Will Bring the City Security,” Merchant’s Association Review, August 1903, p. 2, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 646, File 4 of 6.
8. Rupert Blue, Letter to Kate Lilly Blue, San Francisco, September 23, 1903. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.
9. Walton Bean, Boss Ruef’s San Francisco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1952), p. 41.
10. Rupert Blue, Letter to Walter Wyman, December 9, 1903, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 616, File 1 of 2.
11. “Says City Is Seat of Satan,” San Francisco Chronicle, May 24, 1904.
12. Sacramento Bee, March 1, 1904, p. 1.
13. Rupert Blue, Personal Letter to Surgeon General Wyman, January 15, 1904, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 617, File 1 of 2.
1. Telegrams regarding the case of Irene Rossi list her address as 18 Verraness or Versaness, probably a misspelling of Varennes St., an alley in the Latin Quarter. Running between Union and Green Streets, it is still lined by wood-framed Victorian row houses, nearly identical to and just a block from Jasper Place, where Pietro Spadafora and his mother died.
2. Rupert Blue, Letter to the Surgeon General, February 24, 1904, National Archives and Records Administration, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 617, File 1 of 2.
3. Rupert Blue, Telegram to Wyman, February 17, 1904, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 617, File 1 of 2.
4. Rupert Blue, Personal Letter to Surgeon General Walter Wyman, February 23, 1904, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 617, File 1 of 2.
5. Ibid., March 2, 1904, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 617, File 1 of 2.
6. Ibid., November 30, 1904, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 617, File 2 of 2.
7. Ibid., July 12, 1904, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 617, File 1 of 2.
8. Ibid., July 21, 1904, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 617, File 1 of 2.
9. Ibid., August 18, 1904, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 617, File 2 of 2.
10. Ibid., January 7, 1905, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 617, Folder 5608.
11. Resolution of San Francisco Board of Health, February 16, 1905, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 646, Folder 5608, 1901–1907, Misc., File 2 of 4.
12. Rupert Blue, Letter to Miss Kate Blue, April 26, 1905. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.
13. Ibid., July 18, 1905. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.
14. From William Colby Rucker’s unpublished autobiography, “Under the Yellow Flag: Reminiscences of a Sanitarian,” p. 8, graciously shared by his grandson Colby Buxton Rucker.
15. Pauline Jacobson, “Specialist Not Blue over the Plague,” San Francisco Bulletin, February 21, 1908.
16. Rupert Blue, Letter to Kate Lilly Blue, September 3, 1905. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.
17. Rucker, “Under the Yellow Flag,” pp. 83–87, courtesy of Colby Buxton Rucker.
18. Rupert Blue, Letter to Miss Kate Blue, September 3, 1905. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.
1. Gladys Hansen and Emmet Condon, Denial of Disaster: The Untold Story and Photographs of the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906 (San Francisco: Cameron and Company, 1989), pp. 13–14. Ms. Hansen, archivist of the city of San Francisco, posted additional quake research on the Web site of the Museum of the City of San Francisco, at www.sfmuseum.org.
2. William Bronson, The Earth Shook, the Sky Burned (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1986), p. 43.
3. Arnold Genthe, As I Remember (New York: A John Day Book, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1936), pp. 88–89.
4. Hansen and Condon, Denial of Disaster, p. 49.
5. Malcolm E. Barker, ed., Three Fearful Days: San Francisco Memoirs of the 1906 Earthquake and Fire (San Francisco: Londonborn Publications, 1998), p. 137.
6. Hansen and Condon, Denial of Disaster, pp. 32–33.
7. Ibid., pp. 73–74.
8. Ibid., p. 43, weighs the reports of atrocities—the real and the apocryphal—as does Bronson, The Earth Shook, the Sky Burned, p. 51.
9. George Cooper Pardee, Telegram to Senator George C. Perkins, May 4, 1906, George Cooper Pardee Correspondence and letters, Call Number C-B 400, Box 31, the Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley. (Other estimates of losses ranged from $350 million to $1 billion, according to Bronson, The Earth Shook, the Sky Burned, p. 108.)
10. Hansen and Condon, Denial of Disaster, pp. 152–153. Ms. Hansen’s research revised the mortality figures from 498 to about 3,000 dead.
11. Bronson, The Earth Shook, the Sky Burned, p. 83.
12. Ibid., pp. 96–116.
13. George Cooper Pardee, Letter to George C. Houghton, Boston, Mass., April 21, 1906, George Cooper Pardee Correspondence and Papers, Call Number C–B400, Box 30, letters written by Pardee from March 9 to April 21, 1906, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.
14. Bronson, The Earth Shook, the Sky Burned, p. 118.
15. Barker, ed., Three Fearful Days, pp. 292–297.
16. Hansen and Condon, Denial of Disaster, p. 123.
17. Letter from the army to James W. Ward, president of the Health Commission, May 8, 1906, National Archives and Records Administration, San Bruno, Calif., Records Group 112, Letterman General Hospital, Correspondence and Related Records pertaining to the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, 1906, Entry 363, Box 1 of 3, Reports (12) of Health Commission, San Francisco.
18. Surgeon General of the Army O’Reilly, Telegram to Torney, Chief Surgeon, Presidio, San Francisco, Calif., April 24 and 25, 1906, NARA, San Bruno, Calif., Records Group 112, Letterman General Hospital, Correspondence and Related Records Pertaining to the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, 1906, Entry 363, Box 2 of 3, Misc. Correspondence and Directives.
19. Rupert Blue, Letter to Surgeon General Wyman, May 21, 1906, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 618, File 2 of 3.
1. Walton Bean, Boss Ruef’s San Francisco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1952), pp. 152–153.
2. Stranger than fiction, the bizarre denouement of the San Francisco graft trials is too convoluted to detail here. Highlights of the aftermath—including Prosecutor Heney’s attempted assassination, Investigator Burns’s future as head of the eponymous detective agency, Boss Ruef’s and Mayor Schmitz’s appeals and abbreviated jail terms, and the latter’s amazing return to city politics—are told by Bean, above, pp. 300–316.
3. Minutes of the San Francisco Board of Health, Friday, August 26, 1907, San Francisco Public Library, San Francisco History Center. The incident was also covered in the San Francisco Call, August 27, 1907, p. 14, col. 12.
4. F. William Blaisdell, M.D., and Moses Grossman, M.D., Catastrophes, Epidemics and Neglected Diseases: San Francisco General Hospital and the Evolution of Public Care (San Francisco: The San Francisco General Hospital Foundation, California Publishing Co., 1999), p. 62.
5. Minutes of the San Francisco Board of Health, September 3, 1907, San Francisco Public Library, San Francisco History Center.
6. Telegram from Mayor Edward Taylor of San Francisco, quoted in President Theodore Roosevelt’s Telegram to Surgeon General Wyman, on September 5, 1907, National Archives and Records Administration, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 618, File 1 of 2.
7. Surgeon General Wyman, Telegram to Hon. Edward R. Taylor, Mayor, San Francisco, September 5, 1907, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 618, File 1 of 2.
8. William Colby Rucker, “Under the Yellow Flag: Reminiscences of a Sanitarian.” Unpublished autobiography courtesy of his grandson Colby Buxton Rucker, p. 112.
9. Frank Morton Todd, Eradicating Plague from San Francisco: A Report of the Citizens’ Health Committee and an Account of Its Work (San Francisco: C. A. Murdock & Co., 1909), p. 38.
10. Chung Sai Yat Po, September 12, 1907.
11. Personal communication, Steve Wong, manager of the Hotel St. Francis, photo archives, regarding the hotel’s temporary headquarters in quake-shattered Union Square.
12. “No Quarantine Contemplated and No Cause for Alarm Is Found,” San Francisco Call, September 14, 1907, p. 14, col. 2.
13. Rupert Blue, Letter to the Surgeon General, September 22, 1907, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 618, File 1 of 2.
14. Blaisdell and Grossman, Catastrophes, Epidemics and Neglected Diseases, p. 64.
15. “Examination of Suspected Plague,” Chung Sai Yat Po, September 13, 1907, p. 2.
1. Rupert Blue, Letter to “Dear Dr. Glennan,” September 25, 1907, National Archives and Records Administration, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 618, File 1 of 2.
2. Rupert Blue, “The Underlying Principles of Anti-Plague Measures,” California State Journal of Medicine, August 1908, reprinted in Frank Morton Todd, Eradicating Plague from San Francisco: A Report of the Citizens’ Health Committee and an Account of Its Works (San Francisco: C. A. Murdock & Co., 1909), p. 217.
3. Rupert Blue, Circular Letter to San Francisco on rat extermination, October 1, 1907, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 618, File 1 of 2.
4. Rupert Blue, Telegram to Surgeon General Walter Wyman, October 18, 1907, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 618, File 1 of 2.
5. Rupert Blue, Letter to Walter Wyman, November 2, 1907, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 618, File 1 of 2.
6. Rupert Blue, “Rodents in Relation to the Transmission of Bubonic Plague,” reprinted in Todd, Eradicating Plague from San Francisco, p. 259.
7. Rupert Blue, Letter to the Surgeon General, transmitting necropsy of Margaret Bowers, December 30, 1907, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 618, File 2 of 2.
8. The tragedy of the Bowers family is told in several contemporary accounts, including a 1908 Harper’s Weekly article by William Inglis, “The Flea, the Rat and the Plague” which contends that six people died, with only a two-month-old baby surviving. What city and federal records agree upon is that Marguerite and Howard Bowers died of plague, while at least three additional family members sickened and a fourth was hospitalized. For the death toll, this account relies on San Francisco Death Certificates, San Francisco Department of Health, and the autopsy report of Marguerite Bowers sent by Rupert Blue to Walter Wyman on December 30, 1907, on file at the NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 618, File 2 of 2. Documents variously refer to Mrs. Bowers as “Margaret” or “Marguerite.”
9. Blue, “The Underlying Principles of Anti-Plague Measures,” in Todd, pp. 218–219.
10. “How to Catch Rats,” a circular by W. C. Rucker, reprinted in Todd, Eradicating Plague from San Francisco, p. 225.
11. Rupert Blue, Letter to Surgeon General Walter Wyman, November 30, 1907, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 618, File 2 of 2.
12. Rupert Blue, Letter to Mrs. Annie M. Blue, November 19, 1907. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.
13. Rupert Blue, Letter to Surgeon A. H. Glennan, December 2, 1907, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 618, File 2 of 2.
14. Rupert Blue, Confidential Letter to Dr. Glennan, January 14, 1908, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 619, File 5608: 1908.
15. “Citizens Urged to War on Rats,” San Francisco Call, January 29, 1908, p. 7, col. 4.
16. Ibid.
17. William Colby Rucker, “Under the Yellow Flag: Reminiscences of a Sanitarian,” unpublished autobiography, courtesy of his grandson Colby Buxton Rucker, p. 118.
18. Todd, Eradicating Plague from San Francisco, pp. 85–90 and 296–313.
19. Edna Tartaul Daniel, “Robert Langley Porter: Physician, Teacher and Guardian of the Public Health,” University of California Medical Center Library, Archives and Special Collections, Regional Oral History Office, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, p. 43.
20. Minutes book of the San Francisco Board of Health, February 28, 1908, San Francisco Public Library, History Room.
21. “Orders Slaughter Houses Destroyed,” San Francisco Call, February 29, 1908.
22. “No Time for Half-Way Measures—CLEAN UP,” San Francisco Examiner, editorial page, February 14, 1908.
23. 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): 281.
24. “Warn Women Against the Rat Evil,” San Francisco Call, February 13, 1908, p. 5, col. 1.
25. Rupert Blue, Letter to Kate L. Blue, March 11, 1908. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.
26. “S.P. Men Hunt Rats,” San Francisco Call, February 19, 1908, p. 7, col. 4.
27. “Thousand a Day Cost of Crusade,” San Francisco Call, February 15, 1908, p. 4.
28. “Women Continue War on Rats,” San Francisco News, February 19, 1908, on file in Scrapbook of Citizens’ Committee on Plague Eradication, San Francisco Public Library, History Room.
29. Death Certificates of Rachel Voorsanger, January 15, 1908, and Harry Regensburger, January 3, 1908, San Francisco Health Department.
30. Annette Guequierre Rucker, “Woman’s Part in the San Francisco Sanitary Crusade.” Thanks to Colby Buxton Rucker of Arnold, Md., for sharing his grandmother’s essay.
31. “Public Health Up to People,” San Francisco Call, February 8, 1908, p. 5, col. 3.
32. W. Colby Rucker, “Frisco’s Fight with Bubonic Plague,” Technical World Magazine, 1908, p. 262.
33. Todd, Eradicating Plague from San Francisco, pp. 82–83.
34. Rupert Blue, Letter to Mrs. A. M. Blue, February 18, 1908. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.
35. Rucker, “Under the Yellow Flag,” p. 122.
36. Daniel, “Robert Langley Porter,” p. 50.
37. The rebuilt hospital became the model of public health response to the AIDS epidemic, as discussed in Blaisdell and Grossman, Catastrophes, Epidemics and Neglected Diseases: San Francisco General Hospital and the Evolution of Public Care (San Francisco: The San Francisco General Hospital Foundation, California Publishing Co., 1999).
38. This alfresco fruit feast was recounted in two contemporary accounts in the San Francisco press: “ ‘Clean-Up’ Cheered at Fruit Dinner,” San Francisco Examiner, March 22, 1908, and “Spread Feast in Sanitary Street,” San Francisco Call, March 22, 1908.
1. Rupert Blue, Letter to Miss Kate L. Blue, March 11, 1908. Collection of Michael Hughes.
2. 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): 282.
3. Pauline Jacobson, “Specialist Not Blue over the Plague,” San Francisco Bulletin, February 21, 1908.
4. Ibid.
5. “San Francisco Will Not Be Quarantined,” “Great Unit Fighting Filth in Metropolis,” and “Laboratory Method of Fighting Plague,” a three-part series by Herbert Bashford, San Jose Mercury, March 5, 1908, to March 7, 1908.
6. Edna Tartaul Daniel, “Robert Langley Porter: Physician, Teacher and Guardian of the Public Health,” University of California Medical Center Library, Archives and Special Collections, Regional Oral History Office, the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, p. 40. This tart recollection came in an oral-history interview Porter gave Mrs. Daniel at the age of ninety.
7. By the end of the campaign, Blue’s cheese purchases alone totaled four thousand pounds a month. Letter to the Surgeon General, December 7, 1908, National Archives and Records Administration, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 619, Folder 5608, File 2 of 3.
8. “Look Out for Colored Rats,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 8, 1908.
9. Walter Wyman, Personal Letter to P.A. Surgeon Rupert Blue, March 18, 1908, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 618, File 1 of 3.
10. Coroner’s Report of the Death of H. A. Stansfield, April 15, 1908, Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, City and County of San Francisco, Calif. See also “Shoots Himself When Grief Is Unbearable,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 17, 1908, p. 9, col. 2.
11. “A Mad Scientist,” Wasp 59, no. 17 (April 25, 1908): 4–5.
12. William Colby Rucker, “Under the Yellow Flag: Reminiscences of a Sanitarian,” unpublished autobiography, courtesy of his grandson Colby Buxton Rucker, p. 113.
13. Ralph Chester Williams, The United States Public Health Service, 1798–1950 (Washington, D.C.: Commissioned Officers of the United States Public Health Service, 1951), p. 264.
14. C. H. Woolsey, Letter to Rupert Blue, June 24, 1908, National Archives and Records Administration, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 618, File 3 of 3. See also “Rat Inspector Tears Up Flooring for Fun,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 18, 1908, p. 5, col. 2.
15. Risse, “ ‘A Long Pull, a Strong Pull, and All Together,’ ” p. 275.
16. Rupert Blue, Letter to the Surgeon General, April 27, 1908, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 618, File 3 of 3.
17. Ibid.
18. Gray Brechin, Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), pp. 162–163.
19. Rupert Blue, Personal Letter to Surgeon General Walter Wyman, May 11, 1908, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 618, File 2 of 3.
20. Rupert Blue, to Walter Wyman, page 2 of undated fragment, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 619, Folder 5608: 1908.
21. Rupert Blue, Letter to Walter Wyman, June 19, 1908, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 618, File 3 of 3.
22. “Bubonic Plague: The Menace of Centuries,” New York Times, June 14, 1908, sec. 5, p. 2. The victory was prematurely reported in a sidebar headlined TWO LITERARY CLASSICS AND THE PLAGUE.
23. Letter of Rupert Blue to “My Dear Kate,” June 26. Collection of J. Michael Hughes. Year not specified, but events discussed and the style of Blue’s handwriting sample would place it in 1908.
24. Diary of William Colby Rucker, July 4, 1908, courtesy of Dr. Rucker’s grandson Colby Buxton Rucker.
25. Ibid., July 7, 1908.
26. Ibid., July 19, 1908.
27. Mayor Edward Taylor (San Francisco), Letter to Theodore Roosevelt, July 16, 1908, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 618, File 3 of 3.
28. Colby Rucker Diary, entries of July 27 and 28, 1908.
29. Rupert Blue, Letter to the Surgeon General, August 10, 1908, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 619, Folder 5608, File 1 of 3.
30. Ibid., August 28, 1908, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 619, File Folder 5608, File 1 of 3.
31. Thanks to Colby Buxton Rucker for sharing his grandfather’s typed manuscript of his essay “The Wicked Flea.” Additional details on the mating habits of fleas from personal communication, Dr. Kenneth Gage, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Fort Collins, Colo.
32. Charles T. Gregg, Plague: An Ancient Disease in the Twentieth Century (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985), pp. 75–77.
33. Carroll Fox, Letter to Rupert Blue, August 26, 1908, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 619, Folder 5608, File 1 of 3.
34. Rucker Diary, entry of September 16, 1908.
35. Colby Buxton Rucker, personal communication.
36. Rucker Diary, entries of September 17–28, 1908.
37. Frank Morton Todd, Eradicating Plague from San Francisco: A Report of the Citizens’ Health Committee and an Account of Its Works (San Francisco: C. A. Murdock & Co., 1909), p. 9.
38. Rucker Diary, entry of October 14, 1908.
39. Rucker Diary, entry of October 20, 1908.
1. San Francisco Call, January 5, 1908, as cited in 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): 274.
2. Frank Morton Todd, Eradicating Plague from San Francisco: A Report of the Citizens’ Health Committee and an Account of Its Work (San Francisco: C. A. Murdock & Co., 1909), p. 9.
3. Ibid., p. 183.
4. “Buffalo Bill in a Moment of Confidence,” Wasp 60, no. 17 (October 24, 1908): 7.
5. “Clean Bill of Health Given San Francisco: Surgeon General Wyman Reports Pacific States Free from Plague,” San Francisco Call, November 27, 1908, p. 3, col. 4. (Actually, the headline was misleading, for the city was clean, but plague was migrating east into the countryside.)
6. Rupert Blue, Letter to Kate Lilly Blue, January 20, 1909. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.
7. Details of the fete, covered like a White House dinner, drawn from “Brilliant Banquet in Dr. Blue’s Honor,” San Francisco Call, April 1, 1909, p. 3, col. 1. See also “Homage Paid to Dr. Blue at Big Banquet,” San Francisco Examiner, April 1, 1909, p. 3, col. 1.
8. Rupert Blue, Letter to General Walter Wyman, February 17, 1909, National Archives and Records Administration, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 620, Folder 5608, File 1 of 3.
9. William Colby Rucker, “Under the Yellow Flag: Reminiscences of a Sanitarian,” unpublished autobiography, courtesy of his grandson Colby Buxton Rucker, p. 130 (inserts numbered 2–5).
10. W. C. Rucker, Letter to Surgeon Rupert Blue, August 12, 1909, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 626, Folder: Rucker.
11. Rucker, “Under the Yellow Flag,” p. 129. Discussing his desperate attempts to guard his son from his wife’s tuberculosis by taking him on the road, Rucker wrote: “I thought it better to expose him to this fatigue than to run the chance of picking up his mother’s infection. It was a hard summer physically, but mentally it was undiluted anguish. There were periods of [Annette’s] improvement followed by greater retrogressions.”
12. Rupert Blue, Letter to Surgeon General Wyman, with map of squirrel plague signed “WCR,” November 8, 1909, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 637, Folder: 1899–1909, Surgeon General.
13. Rucker “Under the Yellow Flag,” p. 130.
14. Ibid., p. 157. Rucker’s tireless campaigning for Blue is also recounted in Bess Furman, A Profile of the United States Public Health Service, 1798–1948 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1973), p. 283. There’s a cryptic note in her notebooks, on file at the National Library of Medicine, suggesting that Rucker even lobbied on the golf green with President Taft.
15. “Dr. Blue Assured of Wyman’s Job,” San Francisco Call, January 5, 1912.
16. Rupert Blue, Letter to Miss Kate Blue, December 20, 1911. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.
17. Furman, A Profile of the United States Public Health Service, p. 283.
18. Rupert Blue, Letter to the Attorney General, August 27, 1912, Papers of William Howard Taft, Letters, U.S. Library of Congress, Sect. 6(20), Reel 357.
19. Rupert Blue, Letter to Sallie Blue John, December 31, 1912. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.
20. “Health of Public Is Public Utility,” Washington Star, December 11, 1913, p. 16, col. 1.
21. Ronald L. Numbers, Almost Persuaded: American Physicians and Compulsory Health Insurance, 1912–1920 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), pp. 52–63.
22. Rupert Blue, Letter to Henriet Blue, August 25, 1914. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.
23. Ralph Chester Williams, The United States Public Health Service, 1798–1950 (Washington, D.C.: Commissioned Officers Association of the United States Public Health Service, 1951), p. 548.
24. Rupert Blue, Letter to Joseph P. Tumulty, Secretary to the President, February 26, 1919, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, U.S. Library of Congress, Sect. 4, No. 80, Reel 200.
25. Furman, A Profile of the United States Public Health Service, pp. 332–335. Furman further suggests that the official charged with appointing Blue’s replacement, Treasury Secretary Carter Glass, was himself aspiring to fill a vacant U.S. Senate seat from Virginia and so was influenced in his choice of Cumming, a Virginian, to succeed Blue. Glass subsequently got the Senate appointment.
26. Rupert Blue, Letter to Kate Lilly Blue, June 12, 1923. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.
27. Rucker Diary, March 28, 1924.
28. Colby Buxton Rucker, personal communication.
29. John Stuart Blue, Letter to Kate Lilly Blue, November 6, 1942, Blue Family Papers, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia, S.C.
30. Personnel Files of Rupert Blue, on file in Rockville, Md., obtained through assistance of Dr. John Parascandola, historian of the U.S. Public Health Service, and through the filing of a Freedom of Information Act request. See also obituary in The Washington Post, “Lillian Latour, 94, Widow of Envoy,” June 13, 1977, p. C6. Special thanks to Mary C. Kartman for additional research on Mme. Latour.
31. “Dr. Rupert Blue Laid to Rest,” Marion Star, editorial page, April 19, 1948.
1. John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, American National Biography, vol. 12 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
2. Guenter 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): 284–285.
3. Ibid., p. 278. Risse notes that Blue was a “superb politician” with superior PR sense who “spoke softly while brandishing a powerful stick.” But when asked in a 2000 interview how Blue, a southerner born and bred, had managed to finesse the racial politics of San Francisco, Elizabeth McIntyre, one of the Marion, South Carolina, senior social observers and a friend of the Blue family, took a different view. “Why,” Miss McIntyre replied sweetly, “he had a southern mother.”
4. David T. Dennis, Kenneth L. Gage, et al., Plague Manual: Epidemiology, Distribution, Surveillance and Control (Geneva: World Health Organization, 1999), p. 15. Global case and death reports from 1954 to 1997, and countries with annual plague cases are from the WHO Web site, at www.who.org.
5. Kenneth L. Gage, David T. Dennis, et al., “Cases of Cat-Associated Plague in the Western U.S., 1977–1998,” Clinical Infectious Diseases 30, no. 6 (June 2000): 893–900.
6. Matt Mygatt, “Woman Contracts Plague After Finding ‘Wobbly Mice,’ ” Associated Press Newswires, January 26, 2000.
7. Kenneth Gage, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Fort Collins, Colo., interview with the author, August 24, 2000, by telephone.
8. Interview with bioweapons expert William C. Patrick, former chief of product division, U.S. Army, Fort Detrick, MD, on August 29, 2002.
9. Charles T. Gregg, Plague: An Ancient Disease in the Twentieth Century (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985), pp. 211–213. See also R. W. Burmeister et al., “Laboratory-Acquired Pneumonic Plague,” Annals of Internal Medicine 56, no. 5 (May 1962): 789–800. See also personal communication, Phil Luton, Centre for Applied Microbiology and Research, U.K. Department of Health. Note that the American death occurred while the United States was still actively studying biological weapons, but the British death occurred after the United Kingdom had abandoned its offensive chemical and biological weapons program.
10. Ken Alibek, Biohazard (New York: Random House, 1999), pp. 20, 166.
11. J. Parkhill et al., “Genome Sequence of Yersinia pestis, the Causative Agent of Plague,” Nature 413 (October 4, 2001); see also Marilyn Chase, “Researchers in Britain Have Determined the Genetic Sequence of Bubonic Plague,” Wall Street Journal, October 4, 2001.
12. Rupert Blue, “The Underlying Principles of Anti-Plague Measures,” originally published in California State Journal of Medicine, 1908, reprinted in Frank Morton Todd, Eradicating Plague from San Francisco: A Report of the Citizens’ Health Committee and an Account of Its Work (San Francisco: C. A. Murdock & Co., 1909), p. 215.
13. Bess Furman, A Profile of the United States Public Health Service, 1798–1948 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1973), p. 286.
14. Rupert Blue, Letter to Miss Alda Will, August 9, 1912, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 647, Folder 5608: 1908–12, File 1 of 3.