The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco PDF

Rating: Author: Marilyn Chase ISBN : Product Detai New from Format: PDF

Direct download links available PRETITLE The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco [Kindle Edition] POSTTITLE from 4shared, mediafire, hotfile, and mirror link“San Francisco in 1900 was a Gold Rush boomtown settling into a gaudy middle age. . . . It had a pompous new skyline with skyscrapers nearly twenty stories tall, grand hotels, and Victorian mansions on Nob Hill. . . . The wharf bristled with masts and smokestacks from as many as a thousand sailing ships and steamers arriving each year. . . . But the harbor would not be safe for long. Across the Pacific came an unexpected import, bubonic plague. Sailing from China and Hawaii into the unbridged arms of the Golden Gate, it arrived aboard vessels bearing rich cargoes, hopeful immigrants, and infected vermin. The rats slipped out of their shadowy holds, scuttled down the rigging, and alighted on the wharf. Uphill they scurried, insinuating themselves into the heart of the city.”

The plague first sailed into San Francisco on the steamer Australia, on the day after New Year’s in 1900. Though the ship passed inspection, some of her stowaways—infected rats—escaped detection and made their way into the city’s sewer system. Two months later, the first human case of bubonic plague surfaced in Chinatown.

Initially in charge of the government’s response was Quarantine Officer Dr. Joseph Kinyoun. An intellectually astute but autocratic scientist, Kinyoun lacked the diplomatic skill to manage the public health crisis successfully. He correctly diagnosed the plague, but because of his quarantine efforts, he was branded an alarmist and a racist, and was forced from his post. When a second epidemic erupted five years later, the more self-possessed and charming Dr. Rupert Blue was placed in command. He won the trust of San Franciscans by shifting the government’s attack on the plague from the cool remove of the laboratory onto the streets, among the people it affected. Blue preached sanitation to contain the disease, but it was only when he focused his attack on the newly discovered source of the plague, infected rats and their fleas, that he finally eradicated it—truly one of the great, if little known, triumphs in American public health history.

With stunning narrative immediacy fortified by rich research, Marilyn Chase transports us to the city during the late Victorian age—a roiling melting pot of races and cultures that, nearly destroyed by an earthquake, was reborn, thanks in no small part to Rupert Blue and his motley band of pied pipers.


From the Hardcover edition.Direct download links available for PRETITLE The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco [Kindle Edition] POSTTITLE

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• File Size: 530 KB
• Print Length: 288 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1 edition (March 18, 2003)
• Sold by: Random House LLC
• Language: English
• ASIN: B004SOVC42
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray:
  Not Enabled
• Lending: Not Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #190,620 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #60 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Medical eBooks > Administration & Policy > Public Health
  • #73 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Medical eBooks > Special Topics > History
• #60 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Medical eBooks > Administration & Policy > Public Health
• #73 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Medical eBooks > Special Topics > History

The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco PDF

If you know anything about medieval history, you know about the Black Death, the mysterious plague that killed off a third of the population of Europe. It may be surprising to learn that bubonic plague has made its mark on modern America. In 1900 in San Francisco's Chinatown, Wong Chut King died of a precipitous and horrifying illness, starting with a rush of fever and chills, continuing to agonizing back pains, painful lumps in the groin and armpits, bleeding, coma, and ending in death. It seemed to be the plague, and it seemed to city government the worst possible news, not because a resident of Chinatown had died, but because it meant bad economic prospects if the cause of death was found out. The amazing story of the arrival of bubonic plague in America and the difficulties involved in its eventual control is told in _The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco_ (Random House) by Marilyn Chase. It is a surprisingly exciting tale, with lessons for our own century.

The thousands of citizens of Chinatown were worried that discovery of the plague in their midst would only increase the considerable discrimination against them. They were right; the city quarantined Chinatown, eventually with barbed wire, arbitrarily zigzagged to exclude white stores and churches. Joseph Kinyoun, the federal medical officer for the city, tried to impose the quarantine and force vaccines, but Chinese community groups were able to have them struck down as racially discriminatory. Kinyoun was opposed by civic leaders fearing an economic impact if the plague became well known, and was eventually run out of town. His successor, Rupert Blue, had a little more effect, with some control of the plague before 1906, but then came the earthquake.

I was raised in Contra Costa County to the east of San Francisco. And of course, we went through state history while in grade school. But not once were we told about the Plague, though we heard plenty about the earthquake and the San Andreas faultline. It came as a complete surprise to me that SF had experienced one more trauma during that decade from 1900-1910...they did not just experience the plague once, but rather a series of them. I guess with all the shipping that SF used to be known for, much of it coming from the Orient, it should not have been so unusual. Much of the area that this happened in has changed drastically over the years, including Chinatown, but I still remember going to Chinatown in the 1960s and seeing butcher shops with dead ducks hanging in the windows.

Most cities had problems with rats. If they thought SF was bad, I hate to think what Chicago was like with that city being the major one for slaughterhouses throughout the U.S., and of course, NY with all the shipping from around the world. What made SF unique is that it was relatively smaller to both NY and Chicago, and considered a clean city. I guess even after 60 years, the area was still embarrassed by their run-in with the plague and that's why we didn't get that information in school.

I love medical history, and we have several very good authors out there, with the late Roy Porter and Laurie Garret being a couple of favorites. Chase's book was alright, but did not have the writing ability of the above authors, and the book seemed dry, and very repititious at times. She obviously did her research, to the point of having the names of so many of the Chinese who died in the first wave of plague. The book just lack the feeling of urgency conveyed by other authors when dealing with epidemics.