1 Wong Wai v. Williamson, 103 Fed. Rep. 1 (1900).Google Scholar

2 Jew Ho v. Williamson, 103 Fed. Rep. 10 (1900).Google Scholar

3 I have in mind such works as Paul Starr's The Social Transformation of American Medicine (1982) and the commentary it has provoked. See also K. Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (1984).Google Scholar

4 That there are notable differences as well should also be apparent.Google Scholar

5 T. Butler, Plague and Other Yersinia Infections 73-79 (1983).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Hirst, L. F., The Conquest of Plague: A Study of the Evolution of Epidemiology 29 (1953) (“Hirst, Conquest of Plague”).Google Scholar

7 Id. at 111–15. In 1897 the French researcher P. L. Simond had suggested that the rat flea was the likely plague vector, but his views met little acceptance. An Indian commission established the correctness of Simond's hypothesis beyond any doubt by experiments conducted in Bombay in 1908. Id. at 152–75.Google Scholar

8 For an extremely impressive portrait of the role played by the Chinese in California agriculture during the 19th century, see Sucheng Chan, This Bitter-sweet Soil: The Chinese in California Agriculture, 1860-1910 (1986) (“Chan, This Bitter-sweet Soil”).Google Scholar

9 On the topic of Chinese resistance to discriminatory legislation, see McClain, C., The Chinese Struggle for Civil Rights in Nineteenth Century America: The First Phase, 1850–1870, 72 Calif. L. Rev. 529 (1984), and The Chinese Struggle for Civil Rights in 19th-Century America, 3 Law & Hist. Rev. 349 (1985). See also H. Janisch, The Chinese, the Courts, and the Constitution (Ph.D. diss., 1971).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Ch. 60, 27 Stat. 25 (1892).Google Scholar

11 The best statistics on the Chinese in the United States are to be found in Chan, This Bitter-sweet Soil.Google Scholar

12 San Francisco Examiner, March 7, 1900, at 4, col. 1.Google Scholar

13 On the history of quarantine, see G. Rosen, A History of American Public Health 63-69 (1958).Google Scholar

14 Act of May 27, 1796; 1 Stat. at Large 474, ch. 3.Google Scholar

15 Health and Quarantine Laws for the City and Harbor of San Francisco Relating to the Public Health, San Francisco, 1885.Google Scholar

16 Hirst, Conquest of Plague at 407 (cited in note 6).Google Scholar

17 For an excellent account of the attitude of late 19th-century health authorities toward Chinatown, see J. Trauner, The Chinese as Medical Scapegoats in San Francisco, 1870–1905, California History, 1978, at 70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Health Officer's Report, Board of Supervisors, San Francisco Municipal Reports for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1870, at 233 (hereafter these reports are cited as “San Francisco Municipal Reports, [year]”).Google Scholar

19 Id. Google Scholar

20 Report of the Special Committee on the Condition of the Chinese Quarter, and the Chinese in San Francisco; included in San Francisco Municipal Reports, 1885, at 166.Google Scholar

21 Id at 162.Google Scholar

22 San Francisco Municipal Reports, 1890, at 316.Google Scholar

23 San Francisco Municipal Reports, 1896, at 80.Google Scholar

24 See, e.g., San Francisco Examiner, March 7, 1900, at 4, col. 1. The Examiner in doggerel bemoaned the dent the absence of Chinese would put in the housework industry: Scorn not the humble Chinaman Throw not his uses down For, as I live, we miss him when He stays in Chinatown When happy Yip and Yellow Sin Quit the domestic scene We have to do this work ourselves And damn the quarantine. So ere's to you, yellow Hop Sing Fong We're sorry that you're took You're a poor benighted 'eathen, but A first-class fancy cook. They say your deeds are bloody and Your morals are unclean But goodness how we miss you When you're held in quarantine. Id. March 8, 1900, at 6, col. 4.Google Scholar

25 San Francisco Chronicle, March 8, 1900, at 6, col. 4.Google Scholar

26 Chung Sai Yat Po, March 8, 1900. I am grateful to Professor Sucheng Chan of the Department of History, University of California, Santa Cruz, for making available to me summaries in English of articles published by this leading Chinese daily during the plague controversy.Google Scholar

27 Sacramento Record-Union, March 8, 1900, at 1, col. 7.Google Scholar

28 Chung Sai Yat Po, March 8, 1900.Google Scholar

29 Ho Ah Kow v. Nunan, 12 Fed. Cas. 252 (1879). Case no. 6546.Google Scholar

30 The authoritative history of the district associations and of the Six Companies is H. M. Lai, Historical Development of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, Chinese American History and Perspectives 13–53 (1987); see also S. H. Tsai, China and the Overseas Chinese in the United Stares, 1868-1911, passim (1983); and M. H. Hunt, The Making of a Special Relationship: The United States and China to 1914, at 68–69 (1983).Google Scholar

31 San Francisco Chronicle, March 8, 1900, at 7, col. 5.Google Scholar

32 San Francisco Chronicle, March 8, 1900, at 1, cols. 2-4.Google Scholar

33 San Francisco Examiner, March 9, 1900, at 9, cols. 1-2.Google Scholar

34 Id, March 8, 1900, at 1, cols. 2-1.Google Scholar

35 R. Williams, The United States Public Health Service, 1798-1950, at 249-50 (1950) (“Williams, USPHS”). Starr, P., The Social Transformation of American Medicine 340 (1982).Google Scholar

36 Williams, USPHS at 477-79.Google Scholar

37 Treasury Department Document No. 2165 (Government Printing Office, 1900) (hereafter “Wyman”). The pamphlet was an expanded version of an article by Wyman on the same subject that appeared in the Annual Report of the Marine Hospital Service for Fiscal Year 1897.Google Scholar

38 On medical developments during the second half of the 19th century and on advances in public health, see G. Rosen, A History of American Public Health (1958).Google Scholar

39 Wyman at 10.Google Scholar

40 Id. Google Scholar

41 Id. at 15.Google Scholar

42 Id. at 15-16.Google Scholar

43 Id. at 11-13.Google Scholar

44 Id. at 16-17.Google Scholar

45 Id. at 16-17 & 19-24.Google Scholar

46 On the plague in India see Hirst, Conquest of Plague at 115-20, 416-17 (cited in note 6), and R. Pollitzer, Plague 25-28 (1954). The basic problem with plague was its relative newness. The other great epidemic diseases had been recurring with regularity throughout the modern era, giving an increasingly knowledgeable medical science ample opportunity to observe their course and to experiment with methods of control. The modern plague epidemic was a bare six years old when Wyman wrote. The comparison with cholera was particularly inapposite. As early as 1849, well in advance of Robert Koch's discovery of the cholera bacterium, the London physician, John Snow, by dint of careful observation, had been able accurately to identify the mode of cholera's transmission (through the excreta of cholera victims passed into the water supply), and it was only a matter of time before public health officials were able to devise effective means of preventing the disease's spread. On the subject of cholera see Charles Rosenthal, The Cholera Years 193-97 (1962). Four components, man himself, a microorganism, an insect vector, and a rodent host, share in the genesis of plague epidemics. The relationship between these components is both subtle and complex and was not fully understood until several decades later, and even then it proved impossible to devise a single strategy of plague control for all countries or even for all areas within the same country. As one of the greatest modern authorities on bubonic plague wrote in the mid-twentieth century: “There is no ready-made stereotyped anti-plague procedure.” Hirst, Conquest of Plague at 422. For Wyman, and doubtless for many others, bacteriology's discovery of the plague bacillus made fully clear the way to subdue the disease. In fact, it was but the first step in a long and arduous process.Google Scholar

47 Gassaway to Wyman, March 7, 8, 1890. The original or original copies of this telegram and most subsequent telegraphic correspondence between Marine Hospital Service personnel on the scene and the surgeon general's office in Washington referred to in this article are to be found in National Archives, Record Group 90, U.S. Public Health Service, Central File 1897-1923, #5608 (hereafter “Nat'l Archives, Record Group 90”). Much of the telegraphic correspondence is also reproduced in Annual Report of the Supervising Surgeon General of the Marine Hospital Service of the United States for the Fiscal Year 1900 (hereafter “1900 Annual Report”) at 530ff. The Gassaway telegrams to Wyman of March 7 and 8 are to be found in id. at 530-31.Google Scholar

48 Id. at 531.Google Scholar

49 On March 14 Gassaway acknowledged to Wyman receipt of one box of “antipest serum.” On March 17 he acknowledged receipt of a box of Haffkine's. Nat'l Archives, Record Group 90. On March 8 Gassaway told a reporter that three hundred bottles of “antiseptic and prophylactic serum” had been shipped. San Francisco Examiner, March 8, 1900, at 1, cols. 2-4.Google Scholar

50 San Francisco Chronicle, March 10. 1900. at 7. cols. 1-3.Google Scholar

51 Id. Google Scholar

52 Id. at 6, col. 2.Google Scholar

53 Id. at 7, cols. 2-3.Google Scholar

54 San Francisco Examiner, March 12, 1900, at 2, cols. 1-3.Google Scholar

55 San Francisco Chronicle, March 12, 1900, at 10, col. 4.Google Scholar

56 Accounts of board meetings and actions taken from San Francisco Chronicle, March 13, 1900, at 10, col. 4, & 12, col. 5; San Francisco Examiner, March 13, 1900, at 7, cols. 3-5.Google Scholar

57 San Francisco Examiner, March 13, 1900, at 7, cols. 3-5.Google Scholar

58 Id. Google Scholar

59 San Francisco Chronicle, March 13, 1900, at 12, col. 5.Google Scholar

60 Id. Google Scholar

61 See, e.g., San Francisco Call, March 14, 1900, at 6, col. 3; San Francisco Bulletin, March 15. 1900, pt 6, col. 2.Google Scholar

62 San Francisco Examiner, March 14, 1900, at 6, col. 1.Google Scholar

63 Sacramento Record-Union, March 23, 1900, at 2, col. 2.Google Scholar

64 Id., March 17, at 2, col. 2.Google Scholar

65 San Francisco Examiner, March 23, 1900, at 7, col. 3.Google Scholar

66 From reports in the San Francisco Examiner and Sacramento Record-Union, mid-March 1900. See also Link, V., A History of Plague in the United States of America 3 (1955).Google Scholar

67 Hirst, Conquest of Plague 117 (cited in note 6).Google Scholar

68 Even at the time the inefficiency of such measures was recognized by some. In 1898 Hankin, Simond, and other bacteriologists had pointed out that plague bacteria survived outside the body only for the shortest time, at least in tropical climates. See id. In Australia, where a true plague epidemic was raging contemporaneous with the San Francisco events, government authorities, thanks in part to the discovery by Sydney doctors of a plague bacillus in the stomachs of rat fleas, issued a circular warning plague-infested towns that cleansing and disinfecting could not stamp out the disease. They urged instead that measures be aimed at destroying rats. This was reported in the San Francisco Examiner, May 18, 1900, at 3, col. 7.Google Scholar

69 A view shared by Health Officer O'Brien. Throughout the epidemic Caucasian officials often expressed the belief that the leaders of the Chinese community were engaged in a conspiracy to conceal plague cases. To be sure the Chinese were very skittish about dealing with Caucasian officials, and there may have been instances where individual Chinese sought to conceal cases of sickness. But there is no credible evidence of a conspiracy among the leadership.Google Scholar

70 Sacramento Record-Union, March 23, 1900, at 6, cols. 1-3. There are echoes here again of Bombay; Hirst, in his account of the hygienic measures employed in that city to combat the plague, writes: “Never in the history of hygiene have disinfectant solutions been employed in such profusion …. [One epidemiologist] had to put up an umbrella before entering some plague houses in order to protect himself against the deluge of carbolic acid solution descending from the upper stories into which the disinfectant was being pumped by a fire engine.” Hirst, Conquest of Plague 117 (cited in note 6).Google Scholar

71 Sacramento Record-Union, March 24, 1900, at 3, col. 1.Google Scholar

72 See San Francisco Chronicle, March 24, 1900, at 9, col. 6.Google Scholar

73 Id., March 27, 1900, at 6, col. 2.Google Scholar

74 Several weeks later, in mid-April, the Manufacturers and Producers Association of San Francisco adopted a resolution urging the local press to be cautious about its reports on the plague situation in San Francisco.Google Scholar

75 See series of telegrams from Gassaway to Wyman in Nat'l Archives, Record Group 90, and 1900 Annual Report at 537 (both cited in note 47).Google Scholar

76 1900 Annual Report at 538. A copy of the telegram is also to be found in the documents submitted by the defendants in the case file of Wong Wai v. Williamson, Civil Case No. 12,937, Nat'l Archives, San Francisco Branch, Record Group 21 (hereafter “Wong Wai case file”).Google Scholar

77 I have been unable to find any documents throwing light on Wyman's discussions with the Chinese minister or on what they agreed to.Google Scholar

78 J. Taylor, Haffkine's Plague Vaccine, The Indian Medical Research Memoirs, Memoir no. 27, 1933, at 3-7. For an account of Haffkine's life and work see S. Waksman, The Brilliant and Tragic Life of W. M. W. Haffkine, Bacteriologist (1964).Google Scholar

79 See Moorhead, Maj. A. H., Plague in India, 22 Military Surgeon, no. 3 (1980); reprinted in Todd, F. M., Eradicating the Plague from San Francisco 279. (report of Citizens Health Committee, 1909); see also Cell, J. W., Anglo-Indian Medical Theory and the Origins of Segregation in West Africa, 91 Am. Hist. Rev. 307, 327 (1986)Google Scholar

80 See Meyer, K. F. et al., Plague Immunization: Past and Present Trends, 129 J. Infectious Diseases 513 (1974).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

81 On India see J. K. Codon, The Bombay Plague 1-50 (1900). Several hundreds of persons living in the Australian state of Victoria availed themselves of the opportunity to be inoculated with the vaccine in early 1900. See Bull, R. J., The Practical Application of Haffkine's Plague Prophylactic in Victoria, 5 Intercolonial Med. J. Australia 148–50 (1900).Google Scholar

82 Wyman at 23 (cited in note 37).Google Scholar

83 See numerous letters and telegrams in Nat'l Archives, Record Group 90 (cited in note 47). Wyman's June directive can be found there too. It will be recalled that one of Wyman's first reactions to the discovery of plague in San Francisco was the dispatch of quantities of Haffkine's vaccine and Yersin's serum. See text accompanying notes 47-49 supra.Google Scholar

84 See the several letters from Carmichael to Wyman in February, March, and April 1900 in Nat'l Archives, Record Group 90. The leading 20th-century authority on plague vaccines, K. F. Meyer, declared that the vaccine used in Hawaii was so toxic and reactions to it so severe that its use had to be discontinued. Meyer, et al., 129 J. Infectious Diseases. at 513 (cited in note 80).Google Scholar

85 Hirst thinks that the vaccine probably was fairly effective. See Hirst, Conquest of Plague 417 (cited in note 6). Butler is much more skeptical. Butler, T., Plague and Other Yersinia Infections 199 (1983). The leading modern researcher on plague immunology was K. F. Meyer of the University of California. Some sense of the historical controversy concerning the efficacy of plague vaccines can be had from reading Meyer, et al., 129 J. Infectious Diseases., and Meyer, , Effectiveness of Live or Killed Plague Vaccines in Man, 42 Bull. World Health Organization 653 (1970). See also 7 Inf. Dis. II Bacilli, Gram-Negative 31, Scientific American Medicine, March 1987, “characterizing the modern vaccine's effectiveness as “difficult to assess.”Google Scholar

86 Butler, , Plague and Other Yersinia Infections 199 (1983). In 1906 a federal health official who had conducted extensive experiments in the Philippines with both live and killed vaccines wrote: “I … concluded from animal experiments, as well as from the fact that a number of persons who had received several injections of Haffkine's prophylactic later sickened and died with plague that the killed pest organism constituted for man a far from satisfactory protective against the disease.”Strong, Richard, Vaccination Against Plague, 1 Philippine J. Sci. 181, 186 (1906). Since the discovery of effective antibiotics, immunization has played an increasingly insignificant role in combatting bubonic plague outbreaks.Google Scholar

87 All details of Kinyoun's narrative are taken from his letter to Wyman of June 11, 1900, in 1900 Annual Report at 558-61.Google Scholar

88 Id. at 559.Google Scholar

89 Id. Google Scholar

90 Id., Gassaway's own telegraphic report of the meeting to Wyman reads: “Chinese are to be inoculated by Burlesque [Marine Hospital Service telegrams often employed code when speaking of the plague outbreak. “Burlesque” meant the San Francisco Board of Health]. Physicians will present themselves at ten o'clock on morning twentieth for that purpose. Each will he furnished certificate when inoculated. Conference very friendly. Newspapers keeping affairs quiet and no excitement among citizens.” Nat'l Archives, Record Group 90 (cited in note 47).Google Scholar

91 It is not clear from Kinyoun's account whether the Chinese leaders fully understood the extent of what Wyman was contemplating, that is to say not just a massive, albeit voluntary, inoculation campaign, but a campaign that already had elements of coercion built into it.Google Scholar

92 A handwritten copy of the telegram is to be found in the case file for Wong Wai v. Williamson, Civil Case No. 12937, National Archives, San Francisco Branch (hereafter “Wong Wai case file”). It is not reproduced in the 1900 Annual Report. Google Scholar

93 Copy of the resolution in the Wong Wai case file. Id. Google Scholar

94 Letter Kinyoun to Wyman, May 19, 1900, 1900 Annual Report at 540, and Sactamento Daily Record-Union, May 20, 1900, at 1, col. 4. The extension of the inoculation requirement to Japanese as well as Chinese seeking to leave the city caused a major row with the Japanese government's representatives in the United States. In correspondence both with Board of Health President John Williamson and with Surgeon Kinyoun, Count Mutsu, the Consul-General in San Francisco, protested that the requirement was racially discriminatory, unjustified under the circumstances, and finally not authorized by law. “My … object,” Mutsu wrote to Williamson on May 21, “is to urgently protest against the treatment to which my countrymen have been singled out and subjected, the same appearing to me as an unjust discrimination not warranted by present conditions in the city of San Francisco.” And on May 22 the Japanese charge d'affaires in Washington complained to Secretary of State John Hay that the surgeon general's order was “not general in character but is only applicable to two nationalities. To that extent, therefore, it discriminates against those nationalities and in favor of the people of other nationalities in San Francisco.” This he thought violated the equal treatment provision of the treaty between the United States and Japan. Copies of the relevant correspondence are in National Archives, Record Group 90, #5608. This correspondence is especially interesting in view of the fact that certain Caucasian commentators claimed that the greater willingness of Japanese to submit to inoculation demonstrated the superiority of that nationality over the backward Chinese. See Sacramento Record-Union, May 20, 1900, at l, col. 4; and May 24, 1900, at 8, col. 1.Google Scholar

95 Minutes of state Board of Health, in Wong Wai case file (cited in note 76).Google Scholar

96 The full text of the regulation promulgated by Secretary of the Treasury Gage, L. J. and distributed as Department Circular 93 (1900) to all medical officers of the Marine Hospital Service and to state and local health authorities read as follows: In accordance with the provisions of the act of March 27, 1890, the following regulations, additional to existing Interstate Quarantine Regulations, are hereby promulgated to prevent the introduction of plague into any one State or Territory or the District of Columbia, from another State or Territory or the District of Columbia: 1. During the existence of plague at any point in the United States the Surgeon-General of the Marine Hospital Service is authorized to forbid the sale or donation of transportation by common carrier to Asiatics or other races particularly liable to the disease. [emphasis added] 2. No common carrier shall accept for transportation any person suffering with plague or any article infected therewith, nor shall common carriers accept for transportation any class of persons who may be designated by the Surgeon-General of the Marine Hospital Service as being likely to convey the risk of plague contagion to other communities, and said common carriers shall be subject to inspection. 3. The body of any person who has died of plague shall not be transported except in an hermetically sealed coffin and by consent of the local health office, in addition to the local representative of the Marine Hospital Service. Wherever possible, such bodies should be cremated. The Marine Hospital Service circular is dated May 22, 1900, but it appears that the Treasury regulation was actually issued on May 21.Google Scholar

97 Act of March 27, 1890, ch. 51, 26 U.S. Statutes at Large 31 (1889-91). The statute authorized the president, whenever it should be made to appear to his satisfaction that cholera, vellow-fever, smallpox or plague existed and threatened to spread across state or territorial lines, to cause the secretary of the treasury to promulgate such rules and regulations as would, in his judgment be necessary to stop the spread.Google Scholar

98 According to Kinyoun the entire trouble was due to white physicians who went about the Chinese quarter spreading false rumors about the vaccine. Letter of Kinyoun to Wyman, at 559.Google Scholar

99 What We Should Do About Inoculation, Chung Sai Yat Po, May 18, 1900.Google Scholar

100 The Background of Vaccination, Chung Sai Yat Po, May 19, 1900.Google Scholar

101 Copy of the cable to be found in Nat'l Archives, Record Group 90. Consul Ho sent the following separate cable to his minister: “Health officials want the Chinese to be inoculated to guard against the plague. Chinese generally unwilling. Great consternation. They say there is no plague and want to fight it out. Did all I can.”Id. The Chinese minister passed these on to Surgeon General Wyman with a request that he wire his officers in San Francisco to “use more tact and discretion so as to avoid complications.”Id. Google Scholar

102 Supra note 77.Google Scholar

103 See accounts of the first day's events in Sacramento Record-Union, May 20, 1900, at 1, col. 4. Undoubtedly, another factor, besides apprehension about the vaccine's experimental character, contributing to Chinese reluctance to undergo inoculation was the lack, to their minds, of any apparent pressing necessity for such an extreme measure. To the lay mind, the Chinese included, no doubt, plague was a disease that spread like wildfire and that if it existed in the city of San Francisco should be affecting dozens of victims daily. But what the health authorities were talking about were a relative handful of cases spread over several months. And indeed at the time the inoculation campaign began there were no existing cases under treatment. This made it difficult for the Chinese and many Caucasians as well, to believe that plague existed at all, notwithstanding the very strong bacteriological evidence in the individual cases mentioned. On May 23, for example, Chung Sai Yat Po editorialized that it was “ridiculously impossible” to believe that so few people would have died over such a long period of time if a true plague epidemic existed.Google Scholar

104 Chung Sai Yat Po, May 22, 1900, at 8, cols. 1-2.Google Scholar

105 Strikes Goes on, Chung Sai Yat Po, May 21, 1900.Google Scholar

106 Sacramento Record-Union, May 22, 1900, at 8, cols. 1-2.Google Scholar

107 A Notice Given by the Wicked Health Officers, Chung Sai Yat Po, May 21, 1900.Google Scholar

108 Sacramento Record-Union, May 22, 1900, at 8, cols. 1-2.Google Scholar

109 Zhao and Shen's Case Is a Warning to Us, Chung Sai Yat Po, May 23, 1900.Google Scholar

110 Complaint, for Wong Wai case file, paras. II & IV (cited in note 76). A companion case on behalf of Japanese plaintiffs was filed by the same law firm at the same time; see Obata, Negoro et al. v. Williamson, Civil Case no. 12,938, Nat'l Archives, San Francisco Branch, Record Group 21. Clearly there must have been consultation between the Chinese and Japanese communities about the bringing of these test cases. The decision in Wong Wai made it unnecessary to argue the Obata case.Google Scholar

111 Complaint, Wong Wai case file, paras. V-VII.Google Scholar

112 Id. at para. VIII.Google Scholar

113 Id. at para. IX.Google Scholar

114 Id. at 7-8 of complaint.Google Scholar

115 Wong Wai case file.Google Scholar

116 Though it was not cited in the complaint, the authority for federal judges to issue ex parte interlocutory injunctions was to be found in Rev. Stat. 1874, § 718.Google Scholar

117 Sacramento Record-Union, May 25, 1900, at 8, col. 3.Google Scholar

118 San Francisco Chronicle, May 26, 1900, at 9, cols. 1-3.Google Scholar

119 On the Chinese Empire Reform Association see M. H. Hunt, The Making of a Special Relationship: The United States and China to 1914, at 251-53 (1983), and S. H. Tsai, China and the Overseas Chinese in the United States, 1868-1911, at 129-30 (1983).Google Scholar

120 Sacramento Record-Union, May 26, 1900, at 7, cols. 1-2.Google Scholar

121 Opinion, Wong Wai v. Williamson, 103 Fed. Rep. 1, 4 (1900).Google Scholar

122 The account of the oral argument that follows is drawn from newspaper reports in San Francisco Chronicle, May 26, 1900, at 9, cols. 1-3; San Francisco Examiner, May 26, 1900, at 2, col. 2; and Sacramento Record-Union, May 26, 1900, at 7, cols. 1-2.Google Scholar

123 San Francisco Chronicle, May 26, 1900, at 9, cols. 1-3. The “exclusion art” referred to was presumably the first federal law excluding Chinese laborers, passed in 1882.Google Scholar

124 New York City had established its Metropolitan Board of Health in 1866. On the history of public health bodies, see G. Rosen, A History of American Public Health (1958).Google Scholar

125 Abeel v. Clark, 84 Cal. 226 (1890).Google Scholar

126 56 N.E. 89 (1900).Google Scholar

127 Id. Google Scholar

128 Id. Google Scholar

129 Hon. W. W. Morrow, “Chinese Immigration,” speech delivered at dinner of the Merchants Association of Boston, Dec. 29, 1886, in H. Wagner, ed., Notable Speeches by Notable Speakers of the Greater West 223-24 (1902). The Six Companies was believed by many, quite without foundation, to be in the business of importing Chinese laborers.Google Scholar

130 In re Ark, Wong Kim, 71 Fed. Rep. 382 (1896), aff'd United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898).Google Scholar

131 Wong Wai v. Williamson, 103 Fed. Rep. at 4-5 (1900).Google Scholar

132 Id. at 5.Google Scholar

133 Id. at 8-9.Google Scholar

134 Id. at 7.Google Scholar

135 Id. at 6.Google Scholar

136 Id. at 7-8. Wyman's original telegram of March 6, 1900, had made a distinction between Haffkine's vaccine and Yersin's serum, but no evidence was presented to the court that such a distinction was being made in the inoculation campaign then underway. The court did not note one other curious feature of the inoculation campaign. Apparently a single injection with Haffkine's vaccine was enough to obtain a certificate and free one from the supervision and control of the health authorities. However, the established medical wisdom at the time was that a single injection would confer no lasting immunity but rather needed to be followed by a second one if the procedure were to be efficacious.Google Scholar

137 Id. at 9-10.Google Scholar

138 Telegram from Coombs to attorney general, May 28, 1900, Nat'l Archives, Record Group 90 (cited in note 47).Google Scholar

139 Id., May 31, 1900.Google Scholar

140 Several out-of-state newspapers carried stories about the San Francisco plague situation. The May 27 issue of the New York Herald devoted the whole of page one of its sixth section and more to coverage of the worldwide plague pandemic. The banner headline ran “Bubonic Plague: Life's Most Awful Enemy: It Has Ravaged Continents and Decimated Populations, Finally Securing a Foothold in the United States.” The story featured interviews with the prominent New York physicians, Dr. George Schrady, editor of The Medical Record, and Dr. A. H. Doty, Health Officer of the Port of New York. Notwithstanding the headline, neither expressed great concern about the plague reports emanating from San Francisco.Google Scholar

141 Minutes of the state Board of Health meeting, May 21, 1900, can be found in the Wong Wai case file (cited in note 76). See also Sacramento Record-Union, May 22, 1900, at 8, cols. 1-2.Google Scholar

142 Account of state Board of Health meeting May 28, 1900, taken from San Francisco Call, May 29, 1900, at 1, cols. 2-3 & 2, cols. 2-3.Google Scholar

143 Account of San Francisco Board of Health meeting based on story appearing in the San Francisco Examiner, May 29, 1900, at 12, col. 3.Google Scholar

144 San Francisco Chronicle, May 30, 1900, at 9, col. 5. According to the San Francisco Examiner, May 30, 1900, at 3, col. 1, a reporter for a Chinese newspaper, several Chinese merchants, and Thomas Riordan, an attorney who frequently represented Chinese in civil rights litigation, were present at this meeting.Google Scholar

145 Kinyoun, like many others in the health field at the time, understood that rats played a most significant role in the transmission of bubonic plague but did not understand, and admitted as much, what the exact mode of transmission was. In a talk that he gave to the Medical Society of the State of California in April 1901, he declared that the plague was “primarily a rat disease, becoming secondary ro man” and that the rodent was probably the chief agent of the disease's dissemination. The reason that rats were stricken first, he thought, was that they had more opportunity for contact with “infected material,” i.e., the discharges of the sick. Laboratory experiments, he acknowledged, had demonstrated that fleas could transmit the disease from rat to rat but it had not been shown that they could transmit it from rat to man. “… the exact manner of the spread of plague from rat to man is not known,” he told the society. On the other hand, he had “no doubt that the disease can be and is transmitted from person to person, by direct contact with the discharge of those sick.” He also asserted that there was no doubt that the mild form of bubonic plague known as pestis minor could be spread in the same way. His remarks appeared in the Occidental Medical Times, August 1901, at 4–6.Google Scholar

146 San Francisco Call, May 30, 1900, at 2, cols. 3-4.Google Scholar

147 For text of the ordinance see case file, Jew Ho v. Williamson, Nat'l Archives, San Francisco Branch, Record Group 21 (U.S. Dist. Ct. N. Dist. Cal., File No. 12,940) (hereafter “Jew Ho case file”).Google Scholar

148 San Francisco Examiner, May 30, 1900, at 3, cols. 1-2.Google Scholar

149 San Francisco Chronicle, May 30, 1900, at 9, col. 5.Google Scholar

150 Id. Google Scholar

151 San Francisco Call, May 30, 1900, at 2, col. 4.Google Scholar

152 San Francisco Examiner, May 30, 1900, at 3, col. 3.Google Scholar

153 Sacramento Record-Union, May 31, 1900, at 8, col. 4.Google Scholar

154 San Francisco Examiner, May 31, 1900, at 3, cols. 5-6.Google Scholar

155 Id. Google Scholar

156 San Francisco Chronicle, May 30, 1900, at 9, col. 5, reaction to announcement of quarantine.Google Scholar

157 San Francisco Examiner, June 1, 1900, at 6, cols. 1-2.Google Scholar

158 San Francisco Examiner, June 3, 1900, at 26, col. 1. These remarks were specifically directed at Ho Yow's request that the city assume responsibility for provisioning Chinatown.Google Scholar

159 San Francisco Call, May 30, 1900, at 6, col. 1.Google Scholar

160 Id., May 29, 1900, at 1. The Chinese daily, Chung Sai Yat Po, also interpreted Schrady as flatly denying that there was (or presumably ever had been) any outbreak of bubonic plague in Chinatown. See article entitled No Evidence to Produce, May 30, 1900.Google Scholar

161 San Francisco Call, May 31, 1900, at 1, cols. 1-3.Google Scholar

162 Id., June 2, 1900, at 1.Google Scholar

163 Id. Google Scholar

164 Id. Google Scholar

165 Id., June 1, 1900, at 2, cols. 1-2.Google Scholar

166 Id., May 31, 1900, at 6, cols. 1-2.Google Scholar

167 Id., at 1, cols. 1-3.Google Scholar

168 Interview with the New York Doctor, Chung Sai Yat Po, May 31, 1900Google Scholar

169 San Francisco Call, May 31, 1900, at 1, col. 7.Google Scholar

170 San Francisco Examiner, May 31, 1900, at 3, col. 3.Google Scholar

171 Id., June 1, 1900, at 3, col. 5.Google Scholar

172 See accounts of board meeting in San Francisco Examiner, June 1, 1900, at 3, col. 3; Sacramento Record-Union, June 1, 1900, at 8, col. 1. Text of the resolution in telegram U.S. Sen. George Perkins to Secretary of War Elihu Root, June 2, 1900; National Archives, Record Group 90.Google Scholar

173 See telegrams Maj. Gen. Shafter to Adjutant General, May 22, 1900; Kinyoun to Wyman, May 23, 1900, in Nat'l Archives, Record Group 90 (cited in note 47).Google Scholar

174 See text infra at note 253.Google Scholar

175 Tents Are to Be Put Up, Chung Sai Yat Po, June 1, 1900.Google Scholar

176 An Emergency Meeting to Stop Harsh Treatment, Chung Sai Yat Po, June 1, 1900.Google Scholar

177 San Francisco Chronicle, June 2, 1900, at 9, cols. 1-4.Google Scholar

178 It is difficult to gauge exactly how much hostility may have existed between the Empire Reform Association and the Six Companies. It is significant that the reform association used a lawyer, Samuel Shortridge, who often worked for the Six Companies. On the other hand, later in the quarantine crisis a reform association orator was heard accusing the Six Companies of conniving with the city authorities to maintain the quarantine. San Francisco Examiner, June 3, 1900, at 14, col. 5.Google Scholar

179 San Francisco Chronicle, June 2, 1900, at 9, cols. 1-4. The victim had clearly died of plague.Google Scholar

180 Sacramento Record-Union, June 3, 1900, at 5, col. 4.Google Scholar

181 San Francisco Chronicle, June 2, 1900, at 9, cols. 1-4.Google Scholar

182 Telegram dated June 4, 1900, from Consul Ho to Minister Wu T'ing-fang, attached to letter, dated June 5, 1900, from Acting Secretary of State David Hill to the Secretary of the Treasury, Nat'l Archives, Record Group 90 (cited in note 47).Google Scholar

183 Telegram dated June 4, 1900, from Chue Yet, Chinese Merchants Exchange, to the Chinese Minister in Washington, attached to letter cited supra note 182.Google Scholar

184 Both the San Francisco Examiner, June 4, 1900, at 3, cols. 1-2, and San Francisco Call, June 5, 1900, at 12, col. 2, attributed the motivation for the stricter measures to pressure from merchants.Google Scholar

185 San Francisco Chronicle, June 5, 1900, at 7, cols. 3-4.Google Scholar

186 San Francisco Call, June 5, 1900, at 12, col. 2.Google Scholar

187 San Francisco Examiner, June 5, 1900, at 3, cols. 6-7. One notices that Texas Health Officer Blount, contradicting his previous promises, stated that he would not recommend the lifting of the quarantine on California goods until the San Francisco authorities could assure him that Chinatown “was completely isolated and thoroughly neutralized.” He thought that the only way to accomplish this was to remove all Chinese from “the infected quarter” and destroy it.Google Scholar

188 Sacramento Record-Union, June 5, 1900, at 8, col. 1.Google Scholar

189 San Francisco Call, June 6, 1900, at 3, cols. 3-5.Google Scholar

190 San Francisco Examiner, June 4, 1900, at 3, cols. 2-3. A journalist who had been allowed to visit the infected district reported, “Men who are accustomed to working by the day are penniless and hungry …. Crowds of these men roam the street sullen and desperate.” He noted that the wealthier Chinese were growing more concerned.Google Scholar

191 San Francisco Chronicle, June 4, 1900, at 10, cols. 5-6.Google Scholar

192 Bill of complaint, Jew Ho case file, paras. V & XIII (cited in note 147).Google Scholar

193 Id., paras. V & XIII.Google Scholar

194 The argument here was similar to that made to and accepted by the U.S. Supreme Court in Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 116 U.S. 356 (1686).Google Scholar

195 Bill of complaint, Jew Ho case file, para. VI.Google Scholar

196 Id. Google Scholar

197 Id. at para. XVI.Google Scholar

198 Id. at paras. VIII & IX.Google Scholar

199 Id. at para. XI.Google Scholar

200 Id. Google Scholar

201 Id. at para. VII.Google Scholar

202 Id. at para. XI.Google Scholar

203 Id. at para. VIII.Google Scholar

204 Id. at para. XVIII.Google Scholar

205 San Francisco Call, June 6, 1900, at 3, cols. 2-3.Google Scholar

206 San Francisco Chronicle, June 8, 1900, at 12, col. 1.Google Scholar

207 Jew Ho case file, answer to complainant's bill of complaint, paras. III & IV (cited in note 147).Google Scholar

208 Id. at para. VI.Google Scholar

209 Id. Google Scholar

210 Id. at para. IV.Google Scholar

211 Id. at para. X.Google Scholar

212 Id. Google Scholar

213 Id. at para. VII.Google Scholar

214 Id. at para. XI.Google Scholar

215 Id. at para. XVI.Google Scholar

216 This part of counsel's argument is inferred from the opinion of the court. See Jew Ho v. Williamson, 103 Fed Rep. at 16-17 (1900).Google Scholar

217 123 U.S. 623 (1887).Google Scholar

218 San Francisco Examiner, June 14, 1900, at 2, cols. 3-4.Google Scholar

219 Affidavit of Dr. Ernest Pillsbury in Jew Ho case file (cited in note 147).Google Scholar

220 Telegram from U.S. Secretary of State John Hay to the governor, May 31, 1900, in Appendix to the Report of the Special Health Commissioners Appointed by the Governor to Confer with the Federal Authorities at Washington Respecting the Alleged Existence of Bubonic Plague in California 15 (Sacramento, 1901) (hereafter “Appendix, Special Health Commissioners' Report”).Google Scholar

221 Telegram from the governor to U.S. Secretary of State John Hay, June 13, 1900, in id. at 15-17. Concurring in the governor's conclusion that bubonic plague did not exist were several physicians and a bevy of prominent merchants and bankers.Google Scholar

222 Jew Ho v. Williamson, 103 Fed. Rep. at 16-17.Google Scholar

223 152 U.S. 133. It is interesting that in Lawton among examples of legitimate exercises of police power cited by the court was the compulsory vaccination of children.Google Scholar

224 Jew Ho v. Williamson, 103 Fed Rep. at 17.Google Scholar

225 Id. at 18-20.Google Scholar

226 Id. at 20.Google Scholar

227 Id. at 22-23.Google Scholar

228 Id. at 23.Google Scholar

229 Id. Google Scholar

230 Id. at 24.Google Scholar

231 Id. Having already disposed of the issue before the court, Morrow went on at some length (and unwisely it would seem) to discourse upon the question of whether the plague existed at all in San Francisco. He noted that this had nothing to do with the out-come of the case, that the medical testimony was conflicting, and that the court was not being called upon to decide the question, but having said all of that, he could not resist voicing his own personal view that the plague had not existed and did not then exist in San Francisco. Id. at 24-26.Google Scholar

232 Id. at 26-27.Google Scholar

233 According to the report in the San Francisco Examiner, June 16, 1900, at 5, cols. 1-2.Google Scholar

234 San Francisco Examiner, June 16, 1900, at 5, cols. 1-2.Google Scholar

235 Id. Google Scholar

236 Id. Google Scholar

237 Id. Google Scholar

238 Text quoted in slip opinion by Judge Morrow in Wong Wai case file, contempt action, at 5 (cited in note 76).Google Scholar

239 Id. at 5-6.Google Scholar

240 See text accompanying note 96 supra. Google Scholar

241 Sample of a certificate reproduced in San Francisco Examiner, June 17, 1900, at 15, cols. 2-6.Google Scholar

242 The Chinese account of the events is contained in the affidavits of Wong Wai, Lee Soot, and Milton Bernard accompanying the complaint in the contempt action in Wong Wai case file.Google Scholar

243 Telegram from Governor Gage to President McKinley, June 16, 1900, in Appendix, Special Health Commissioners' Report at 17-18 (cited in note 220).Google Scholar

244 San Francisco Examiner, June 19, 1900, at 8, col. 23.Google Scholar

245 Id. Google Scholar

246 See slip opinion, Wong Wai case file.Google Scholar

247 Kinyoun's remarks were reprinted in the August 1901 issue of Occidental Medical Times. Google Scholar

248 Id. at 15.Google Scholar

249 See J. Haller, Outcasts from Evolution (1971).Google Scholar

250 Id. at 4.Google Scholar

251 Id. at 14.Google Scholar

252 Id. at 10.Google Scholar

253 Id. at 10-11. A wonderful scheme, of course, for insuring the widest possible dissemination of the disease.Google Scholar

254 Id. at 9.Google Scholar

255 Id. Google Scholar

256 Id. Google Scholar

257 Id. at 9.Google Scholar

258 197 U.S. 11 (1905).Google Scholar

259 Id. at 28.Google Scholar

260 Id. at 20-21.Google Scholar

261 Except where otherwise indicated, the chronicle of events in this epilogue is taken from V. Link, A History of Plague in the United States of America 5-11 (1955).Google Scholar

262 The Report of the Government Commission on the Existence of Plague in San Francisco, reprint in 15 Occidental Medical Times, no. 4, April 1901, at 102-3.Google Scholar

263 Id. at 117.Google Scholar

264 W. M. Dickie, Plague in California, 1900-1925 (pamphlet), reprinted from Proceedings of the Conference of State and Provincial Health Authorities of North America 30-32 (1926).Google Scholar

265 See F. M. Todd, Eradicating Plague from San Francisco (report of Citizens Health Committee, 1909). It will be noted that, notwithstanding the focus of the authorities on the killing of rats and the rat-proofing of buildings, this plague episode claimed a large number of victims, thus illustrating how difficult a disease plague is to combat.Google Scholar