16. Letters of John Gilchrist Blue, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia, S.C.
17. Details about the last illness and death of John Gilchrist Blue are drawn from at least four sources: Obituary of John Gilchrist Blue and Letters of Victor Blue and John Gilchrist Blue, found in the Blue Family Collection, the South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina at Columbia. See also Letters of Rupert Blue to Kate Lilly Blue from collection of J. Michael Hughes, and W. W. Sellers, A History of Marion County, South Carolina (Columbia, S.C.: R. L. Bryan Co., 1902), p. 131.
18. Rupert Blue, Letter to Kate Lilly Blue, Albemarle Co., Va., October 27, 1889. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.
19. Rupert Blue, Letter to Kate Blue, Baltimore, Md., February 8, 1892. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.
20. Ibid., December 13, 1891. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.
21. Ibid., April 16, 1892. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.
22. Ibid., May 20, 1892. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.
23. Rupert Blue, Letter to Mrs. Annie M. Blue, December 16, 1910. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.
24. Reports of M. J. Rosenau and John Godfrey, Marine Hospital Service, Department of Health and Human Services, 1895–1896, Personnel Files of Rupert Blue, Division of Commissioned Personnel, Rockville, Md.
25. Letter of Rupert Blue to Kate Lilly Blue, Genoa, Italy, April 18, 1900. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.
26. Ibid., Norfolk, Va., January 24, 1906. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.
27. Regulations Governing Uniforms of Officers and Employees of the United States Marine Hospital Service, Treasury Department, Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office, 1893 and 1896 editions. Courtesy of U.S. Public Health Service Historian Dr. John Parascandola.
28. Thanks to U.S. Public Health Service historian John Parascandola for helpful discussions on the symbolism of the uniform.
29. This undated portrait of Rupert Blue in his Marine Hospital Service dress uniform, probably taken c. 1892 to 1895, is in the Blue Family collection at the South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia, S.C.
HIDING THE DEAD
1. Henri H. Mollaret and Jacqueline Brossollet, Alexandre Yersin, ou Le vainqueur de la peste (Paris: Librairie Artheme Fayard, 1985), p. 137.
2. Ibid., p. 142.
3. Personal communication, Dr. Elisabeth Carniel, director, National Yersiniosis and World Health Organization Collaborating Center of the Pasteur Institute.
4. See Guenter B. Risse, “ ‘A Long Pull, a Strong Pull, and All Together’: San Francisco and Bubonic Plague, 1907–1908,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 66 (Spring 1992): 264. Most doctors regarded clinical examination of physical symptoms as a more reliable way to diagnose illness. “[T]he new bacteriology, with its microscope slides, germ cultures, and selective inoculations of experimental animals, remained an alien world for most of California’s practitioners, trained in an earlier age.”
5. “The Monkey Is Dead,” Chung Sai Yat Po, March 14, 1900, p. 1.
6. Chinese Mortuary Records of the City and County of San Francisco, 1870–1933, National Archives and Records Administration, San Bruno, Calif., Cabinet 40, Drawer 9.
7. For another analysis of “yellow peril,” Chinese and Japanese discrimination, and school segregation, see Gray Brechin, Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), pp. 156–168.
8. “Mayor Phelan Puts Himself on Record,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 10, 1900.
9. Walter Wyman, Telegram to Surgeon Gassaway, March 8, 1900, NARA, San Bruno, Calif., Records Group 90, Quarantine Station, Angel Island, Calif., Series: Letters from Surgeon General to Medical Officer in Charge, July 1, 1891–July 1, 1918, Box 16, Folder, Volume 3.
10. Ibid.
11. J. A. Boyle, “How It Feels to Be Inoculated with Haffkine Serum,” San Francisco Examiner, May 31, 1900, p. 3.
12. Mildred Crowl Martin, Chinatown’s Angry Angeclass="underline" The Story of Donaldina Cameron (Palo Alto, Calif.: Pacific Books, 1986), p. 78.
13. Ibid., pp. 58–61.
14. Ibid., pp. 77–78.
15. “Health Board Guarding the City Against the Plague,” San Francisco Examiner, March 13, 1900.
16. “Suspiciously Small Chinatown Death Rate,” San Francisco Examiner, March 18, 1900.
17. “Chinese Hide Their Sick from Officials,” San Francisco Examiner, March 24, 1900. See also Guenter B. Risse, “ ‘A Long Pull, a Strong Pull, and All Together’: San Francisco and Bubonic Plague, 1907–1908,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 66 (Spring 1992): 263.
18. W. G. Hay, M.D., “The Plague in Chinatown,” Occidental Medical Times, August 1900, pp. 251–253.
19. “Suspiciously Small Chinatown Death Rate,” San Francisco Examiner, March 18, 1900.
20. “In and Out of Kinyoun’s Quarantine,” San Francisco Examiner, March 16, 1900.
21. “Harassment Again,” Chung Sai Yat Po, March 24, 1900, p. 1.
22. Brechin, Imperial San Francisco, pp. 178–179.
23. Guenter Risse, “The Politics of Fear: Bubonic Plague in San Francisco, California, 1900,” New Countries and Old Medicine (Auckland, N.Z.: Pyramid Press, 1995), p. 9.
24. “City Plague Scare a Confessed Sham,” San Francisco Call, March 27, 1900, p. 1.
A NEW QUARANTINE
1. Death of the sixteen-year-old cigar maker Lim Fa Muey from bubonic plague is recorded in the “Chinese Mortuary Record of the City and County of San Francisco, State of California,” available on microfilm at the National Archives and Records Administration, Pacific Region, San Bruno, Calif. Dr. Kinyoun’s recovery of plague bacteria from her glands is reported in an article ironically titled “Investigating Experts Inspect Chinatown and Fail to Find a Single Case of Any Illness,” San Francisco Call, May 30, 1900, p. 1. Her symptoms listed here are those of classic bubonic plague as described by Charles T. Gregg, Plague: An Ancient Disease in the Twentieth Century (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985).
2. Affidavit of Minnie G. Worley, M.D., Jew Ho vs. John Williamson et al., U.S. Circuit Court for the Ninth Circuit, Northern District of California, NARA, San Bruno, Calif., Records Group 21, Old Circuit Court, Northern District of California, Common Law Civil Cases, Box 746, Folder 12,940.
3. Ibid.
4. Walter Wyman, Letter to the Hon. Wu Ti-Fang, May 15, 1900, NARA, College Park, Md., Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 636, 5608, Chinese Mortality 1897–1902, Folder 2 of 2. Although the government’s official letter is addressed to the Chinese envoy as Wu Ti-Fang, San Francisco Chinatown historian Him Mark Lai points out that his name was Wu Ting-Fang.
5. Surgeon General Walter Wyman, Telegram to Quarantine Officer Kinyoun, May 15, 1900, Wong Wai vs. Williamson, Case File No. 12,937, Records Group 21, Old Circuit Court, Civil Cases, NARA, San Bruno, Calif. See also Charles J. McClain, In Search of Equality: The Chinese Struggle Against Discrimination in Nineteenth-Century America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), p. 244.