The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco - Hardcover

Chase, Marilyn

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375504966 ISBN 13: 9780375504969

Publisher: Random House, 2003

Synopsis

“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.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Advance praise for The Barbary Plague

“If the folks at Homeland Security read one book this year, let it be Marilyn Chase's The Barbary Plague, for the way it captures in precise detail how political and business imperatives can impede the battle against a deadly epidemic, in this case the bubonic plague–the fabled Black Death–in old San Francisco. The city's leaders, even its health department, fought the news of plague's arrival more aggressively than the disease itself, despite the deaths of dozens of victims. But Chase's book is also simply a great story told of a long past time when a few heroic men, armed with only the most basic knowledge of infectious disease, stood up to the powers arrayed against them and, through ingenuity and intuition, at last ran this epidemic to ground.” -Erik Larson

“Outbreaks of disease can catalyze either courage or cowardice in individuals and society. In vivid prose and at a pulse-quickening pace, Marilyn Chase brings to life a largely forgotten story of a time when America’s character was tested. There is much to learn about how to confront uncertainty from this remarkable tale.”
—Jerome Groopman, M.D., author of The Measure of Our Days and Second Opinions

“At a time when fear of anthrax and smallpox are very much in the public consciousness, it’s interesting to go back and look at an outbreak in this country of perhaps the most frightening and deadly of all scourges—the bubonic plague. Everything that we imagine today in our worst nightmares happened in San Francisco in the early part of the twentieth century—a population in denial or panic, politicians refusing to tell the truth, and the sadly inevitable blame on racial grounds. Yet even during the worst days, men like Dr. Rupert Blue rose to the occasion in the most amazing, humane, and courageous ways. This story of the past gives me great hope for the present.”
—Lisa See, author of On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family

About the Author:

Marilyn Chase, a longtime reporter for The Wall Street Journal, covers medical science and health care, currently focusing on infectious-disease outbreaks and bioterrorism. An honors graduate of Stanford Uni- versity who also holds a master’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley, Chase lives with her family in San Francisco.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0375504966
• ISBN 13: 9780375504969
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288