Plague in San Francisco

Two Outbreaks.

Bubonic plague is a disease caused by the Yersinia pestis bacillus and is most often transmitted from rats to humans by infected fleas; symptoms include virulent fever and swollen lymph nodes. Known since biblical times, bubonic plague has swept through various regions of the world during the last fifteen hundred years. At least four widespread outbreaks—pandemics—have occurred as well as many local outbreaks, or epidemics. In the first decade of this century, the disease struck San Francisco twice. The second of these two epidemics suggested how effective a coordinated public health campaign could be, but the first showed how political meddling could lead to deadly results.

Death in Chinatown.

On 6 March 1900 the body of a Chinese worker was discovered in the Globe Hotel basement. The dead man was one of more than eighteen thousand Chinese and almost two thousand Japanese who lived in a...

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