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A review by oleksandr
Black Death at the Golden Gate: The Race to Save America from the Bubonic Plague by David K. Randall
3.0
This is a history of bubonic plague arriving in San Francisco in 1900 and attempts to understand / cure / hide up it in the following months and years. I read is as a part of monthly reading for March 2021 at Non Fiction Book Club group.
The book starts just before the Christmas in Honolulu in 1899, when a Chinese man is found with markers of plague – enlarged lymph nodes. Just a bit more that 120 years ago no one knew what causes the plague and how to fight it – so the most ‘efficient’ solution for many was just to burn Chinatown…
In the US the author starts with a prominent medical bacteriologist Joseph Kinyoun, whom current Surgeon General Wyman seen as his competition for the seat and therefore sent as far as he could – to California, which developed rapidly after the gold fever of the mid-XIX century. This was a lucky strike for Frisco, because medical biologist were a rare thing then. The first victims of the plague were found among Chinese and Japanese from the hip from Hong Kong, and the opinion of not only illiterate masses, but many medics, including Kinyoun was that the disease hits ‘lower races’, Asians, whether due to their innate inferiority or diet or ‘uncleanliness’ which is often assigned to ‘the other’. This fed already active anti- Chinese racism among whites.
The first reaction of local authorities regarding the cases was complete denial – assuming misdiagnosis of a venereal disease (enlarged lymphs in groin). This only intensified when Kinyoun went public and several other states suggested hat they may stop all communication with San Francisco to prevent the spread. Chinese were afraid that if among them new plague cases are found, this can lead to negative outcomes from exile to burning, so they hide victims, lowering official statistics.
One argument in favor of fake alarm was that the plague victim number remained small. Only later it was detected that flea that spread the disease, in plague in China and India was Pulex cheposis, but iun SF most common was the Northern European species, Ceratophyllus fasciatus. The difference is that
the Indian rat flea has a spiny ridge in its abdomen where blood from its most recent meal collects, eventually blocking material from reaching the stomach. That clot leads the famished insect to aggressively bite any living mammal that it encounters. Fresh blood helps to dislodge the clot, spurring the flea to essentially vomit some of the material stalled in its belly into the skin of its new victim. The European flea, by comparison, retains less blood in its stomach, leaving it less likely to develop a blockage that prompts it to attack as aggressively. When it does bite, the flea deposits only a fraction of its stomach material into the body of its new host, minimizing its ability to spread infection compared with its more ravenous Asian cousin.
The story goes on with Kinyoun de facto expelled from the city and replaced by Rupert Blue, with 1906 quake, with more research and prevention measures.
An interesting story, which definitely calls for comparisons with the present Covid pandemics.
The book starts just before the Christmas in Honolulu in 1899, when a Chinese man is found with markers of plague – enlarged lymph nodes. Just a bit more that 120 years ago no one knew what causes the plague and how to fight it – so the most ‘efficient’ solution for many was just to burn Chinatown…
In the US the author starts with a prominent medical bacteriologist Joseph Kinyoun, whom current Surgeon General Wyman seen as his competition for the seat and therefore sent as far as he could – to California, which developed rapidly after the gold fever of the mid-XIX century. This was a lucky strike for Frisco, because medical biologist were a rare thing then. The first victims of the plague were found among Chinese and Japanese from the hip from Hong Kong, and the opinion of not only illiterate masses, but many medics, including Kinyoun was that the disease hits ‘lower races’, Asians, whether due to their innate inferiority or diet or ‘uncleanliness’ which is often assigned to ‘the other’. This fed already active anti- Chinese racism among whites.
The first reaction of local authorities regarding the cases was complete denial – assuming misdiagnosis of a venereal disease (enlarged lymphs in groin). This only intensified when Kinyoun went public and several other states suggested hat they may stop all communication with San Francisco to prevent the spread. Chinese were afraid that if among them new plague cases are found, this can lead to negative outcomes from exile to burning, so they hide victims, lowering official statistics.
One argument in favor of fake alarm was that the plague victim number remained small. Only later it was detected that flea that spread the disease, in plague in China and India was Pulex cheposis, but iun SF most common was the Northern European species, Ceratophyllus fasciatus. The difference is that
the Indian rat flea has a spiny ridge in its abdomen where blood from its most recent meal collects, eventually blocking material from reaching the stomach. That clot leads the famished insect to aggressively bite any living mammal that it encounters. Fresh blood helps to dislodge the clot, spurring the flea to essentially vomit some of the material stalled in its belly into the skin of its new victim. The European flea, by comparison, retains less blood in its stomach, leaving it less likely to develop a blockage that prompts it to attack as aggressively. When it does bite, the flea deposits only a fraction of its stomach material into the body of its new host, minimizing its ability to spread infection compared with its more ravenous Asian cousin.
The story goes on with Kinyoun de facto expelled from the city and replaced by Rupert Blue, with 1906 quake, with more research and prevention measures.
An interesting story, which definitely calls for comparisons with the present Covid pandemics.