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The San Francisco Plague
The San Francisco Plague
The San Francisco Plague was one of the most troubling cases of the plague ever to affect the
United States, but what was it that prompted medical officials to act so air-headedly?
Welcome to today's video, where we'll be taking a look at the San Francisco Plague and all the
trouble it brought for the Californian population while it lasted. Don't forget to subscribe to our
channel and turn notifications on more videos like this one. We hope you enjoyed it, and we'll
Also known as the Black Death, the Bubonic plague ravaged Europe and Asia for many centuries
The events that unfolded in San Francisco from 1899 to 1901—still being researched and written
about more than a century later—represent one of the most infamous chapters in U.S. public
health history. Similar to how the covid-19 pandemic spread by innocent travelers who had no
idea that they were infected while they were, in the Summer of 1899, a ship sailing from Hong
After a farewell dinner put on by Washington’s medical elite, Joseph James Kinyun arrived in
San Francisco to learn that this this same plague ship was bound from Honolulu. Although
Kinyoun found no plague on board, two similar scares followed within the next few weeks. The
second of these prompted California and the federal government to take action fast. Kinyoun
eventually learned that the plague had broken out in Honolulu, making it also inevitable that
quarantined on Angel Island. Once the boat was searched, 11 stowaways were found. Strangely
enough, two of those were missing the next day. Some bodies were found in the Bay and an
Bad news for the public, who was morbidly scared of the possible outcome knowing how a big
part of the Eurasian population had been wiped out by the merciless black death.
However, there wasn't any immediate outbreak of the disease until nine months had passed.
In the meantime, Kinyoun had to handle two smallpox epidemics in U.S. Army troops returned
from Manila, suffer four recurrent episodes of appendicitis, and also inspect hundreds of the
incoming Asian immigrants for their diseases and deformities, even making a difficult decision
about one potential Japanese immigrant with a severe hand deformity. Kinyoun overlooked the
man's otherwise excludable condition and authorized his immigration. The man in question,
Hideyo Noguchi, not only became Kinyoun's friend and an acclaimed microbiologist, but
could've even won the Nobel Prize had he not died early due to his research elucidating cases of
syphilis.
In 1894, two research physicians had identified the bacillus that caused the bubonic plague, but
little was known about the transmission, treatment, or prevention methods. It was even labeled a
racial disease that people of European ancestry were immune to, because European expatriates in
colonial India and Hong Kong rarely caught diseases that ravaged the deprived, crowded
People in different parts of the world were credited with the discovery, depending on which
journals they had read. Scientists theorized that the germ infected humans through food or open
wounds. However, despite not having enough, information on the plague to know how exactly
people got infected, health officials didn’t stop there until they found more information regarding
possible cases.
On March 6, 1900, a city health officer autopsied a deceased Chinese man, finding organisms in
the body that heavily resembled the plague. Things got so tense that they even began running
carbolic acid through Chinatown sewers, which ironically, actually spread the disease faster
because it flushed out rats that inhabited the sewers. In San Francisco, however, political issues
had gone against scientific efforts. Anti-Chinese feeling prompted the authorities to quarantine
Chinatown first, and though they objected, the business community did the same.
One of the few public health officials capable to provide with a diagnosis for the plague had
arrived in San Francisco not long beforehand. His name was Joseph Kinyoun, a veteran of the
Kinyoun's tests on samples confirmed the plague's presence, though political and popular
pressure had already prompted the local Board of Health to lift the quarantine. From that point
medical authorities, politicians, the press, and the quarantine-averse public resisted his efforts.
Louisiana and Texas had threatened a state border closure, while California governor Henry
Gage was concerned that other states would suspect a problem with his state's annual $25 million
fruit harvest, disparaging a plague fake in a letter to US secretary of state John Hay and issued
When dawn came on March 7, 1900, Chinatown was circled by rope and surrounded by
policemen preventing egress or access to anyone but Whites. The 12-block area was surrounded
The widespread racism expressed towards Chinese immigrants did not help matters at the time of
the Chinatown plague, with standard social rights and privileges being mostly denied to the
Chinese people. Even landlords would refuse to maintain their own property when renting to
Chinese immigrants. Most of the Chinatown community's living conditions reflected the social
norms and racial inequalities during that time for Chinese people. Things got so heated up that
discrimination for the Chinese Americans prompted two acts to be published: the quarantine of
San Francisco's Chinatown, and the permanent extension of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
Chinese immigrants were seen as disease carriers without them even having actual evidence of
Bubonic plague.
Because San Francisco's measures were discriminatory and segregatory, allowing European
americans to leave the affected area due to their perceived immunity but prompting Chinese and
Japanese americans to possess a health certificate to leave the city, wide misinformation and
Francisco, as they were prevented from working. Few Chinese agreed to take the inoculation,
especially after press reports on May 22, 1900, that people who did agree were experiencing
severe pain from the untested vaccine. On May 24, 1900 with the help of Chinese Six
Companies, they hired the law firm of Reddy, Campbell, and Metson. Defendants included
Joseph J. Kinyoun and all of the members of the San Francisco Board of Health. The Chinese
wanted the courts to issue a provisional injunction to enforce what they argued was their
The plague outbreak continued to worsen between 1901 and 1902, with a 1901 address to both
houses of the California State Legislature, and Gage accusing federal authorities, particularly
For many upper and middle-class white San Franciscans, the first sign something was wrong in
Kinyoun infected a few guinea pigs and a monkey. A few days after the Call definitively
San Francisco Mayor James Phelan ordered 100 doctors to make a sweep of Chinatown,
knocking on every door and identifying every possible plague case. It sent terror through the
Chinese community, which was fearful of what'd would happen if a plague victim was found in
their homes. Given that just a couple months, 4,000 homes were burned to the ground in
In April 1901, Texas's governor declared he would cut off all trade with California if they didn't
prove they'd handled their obvious plague epidemic. We have "little confidence in the California
authorities," he said. In the absence of proof, he considered the state's silence on the matter to be
Kinyoun was eventually denied vindication after his defamation campaign and was promptly
The state governments of Colorado, Texas and Louisiana imposed quarantines of California by
1902. As the 1902 general elections approached, members of the Southern Pacific Board and the
Railroad Republican faction saw Gage as an embarrassment to state Republicans because of his
haphazard and hare-brained measures to deny the plague outbreak to protect the state's economy,
which were quickly proven incorrect by federal agencies and newspapers. In his place, former
Mayor of Oakland George Pardee, a German-trained medical physician, received the nomination.
Pardee's nomination was largely a compromise between the Railroad Republican factions. Even
Railroad barons were very irritated at this situation, demanding state officials to do something
about it. This prompted California to clean up Chinatown. Unsafe and unsanitary buildings were
also demolished and rebuilt, rats were killed, rotting floors were replaced and the epidemic was
temporarily halted. However, when the plague cropped back up in 1907, it was found among
some white residents both in Oakland and San Francisco, with officials jumping into action
immediately and spending $2 million to trap and kill rats, just over $55 million today.
The second wave happened because, in 1906, an earthquake of record proportions devastated
San Francisco. The ruin of the city's buildings made not just people, but rats, homeless. The
subsequent year or two of living in refugee camps while rebuilding was highly conducive to rat
and flea infestations. In 1907, cases of plague were reported. But with hindsight on the last
epidemic and new knowledge from research, officials launched a new kind of campaign. They
offered a bounty on rats. A similar rat-catching campaign had been used successfully to fight
plague in New Orleans. It worked as well in San Francisco, and though this second epidemic was
It wasn't until November 1908 when San Francisco was finally declared plague-free, prompting
Blue to become surgeon-general. However, the disease had somehow crossed into the wild
squirrel population, prompting an average of seven people a year, most of them hikers, to
Sadly, Dr. Kinyoun’s career never recovered. But his earlier accomplishments in bringing first-
class research to the health sciences field were not forgotten. In a 2012 paper, two researchers
praised a man they called “the forgotten forefather” who helped birth the National Institutes of
Health. His only apparent 'mistake' was being honest about the plague's reality with good
intentions at heart, and not attempting to suppress it for political or economical gain. Even with
new plague cases appearing in the state, Governor Gage refused to admit the existence of plague.
So, what are your thoughts on all the trouble caused by the San Francisco Plague? Let us know
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