I 24 P res ence, bionomics and distribution of such insects as might 

 play a role in their transmission?" 



He had been settled but four months in a flat (2059 Grove 

 street) and to the task of his teaching in Oakland, when San 

 Francisco called upon him for answer to that exact question. 



In 1900 that city had discovered herself infested of bubonic 

 plague; and twenty- two had died of the disease. In the next 

 year, thirty more died ; and in the next, forty-one. The death 

 curve had then descended. It had reached zero in 1906 just 

 before an earthquake and fire (April 6) overcame the town. 

 Whereafter deaths from plague reappeared and early in 1907 

 promised a record. Before that year was to end, 156 were to 

 sicken of the disease and 78 to die. 



Dr Joseph J Kinyoun, who when forty in 1900 had first 

 recognized the malady, had been promised a lynching for his 

 pains; whereafter he was crowded out of the western scene by 

 Washington command. To take his place in 1903, another 

 member of the U S public health service had been sent in, 

 Rupert Blue. After two years' absence (now forty, since 

 1892 continuously in the U S public health service, to end its 

 surgeon-general in 1912 and president of the American 

 medical association in 1 9 1 6) , he had returned to his job. 



Authoritative handling of the whole situation had never 

 been good. From the first, federal authority had concentrated 

 upon the town, for this kind of sickness was "interstate." But 

 it had not gotten very far. The early dead were chiefly Chinese; 

 and San Francisco's board of health felt that the inhabitants 

 of Chinatown were hers. Later, freight embargoes had been 

 put upon California by her sisters. This threatened the "busi- 

 ness" of the state and so state authority had taken a hand — 

 principally to suppress "health" reports considered inimical. 

 Three separate agencies were therefore active at the "manage- 

 ment" of a situation obviously in need of concert. To help 

 toward this end Wherry was needed. Thus it was that he was 

 invited to become the bacteriologist to San Francisco's health 

 board; and accepted. 



His nomination had come through Dudley Tait, surgeon. 

 The son of a university professor and educated since boyhood 

 in France, he had returned to his birthplace French (just as his 

 brother William, the legal counsel of the state medical board, 



