had returned from Gottingen, German). In spite of personal 125 

 success and absence of medical school portfolio, he had retained 

 an enduring interest in medicine's larger problems. Thus he 

 had been chiefly responsible for the formulation of Califor- 

 nia's medical practice act; and for six years past, as "chairman 

 of the committee on credentials" of the state board of medical 

 examiners, the hangman to see its decrees carried into effect. 

 The result was that men, whether acquainted with him or 

 not, always feared, and either loved or hated him. A common 

 form of salutation among them was: "How is that son-of-a- 

 bitch friend of yours?" He carried a card in his pocket: "In 

 case of sudden and disabling accident, do not take me to San 

 Francisco's emergency hospitals." For such reasons brother 

 practitioners wasted no time on him. 



Just now he was trying to put better sense into California's 

 health situation, and impressed of the qualifications of the new 

 professor in Oakland's college of medicine hoped, through 

 his appointment, to bring about a surer coordination of the 

 state's plague suppression measures. Wherry's scientific knowl- 

 edge, made functional by that quiet front of his, worked 

 quickly toward this end, though not, as we shall see, without 

 the production of harness galls. 



AS the new bacteriologist, Wherry established himself in 

 San Francisco's pest house. Out of it worked the over- 

 ailed plague suppressors and into it came daily their game; the 

 tissues, also, of those human victims who had perished of the 

 scourge. The trip across the bay to San Francisco being long, 

 he moved his belongings there (to 936 Lake street) . 



The day's routine got him quickly to that study of the 

 "presence, bionomics, and distribution" of the "insects" of 

 which he had preached to the doctors. "When acute plague 

 was present in greatest degree" between August and Novem- 

 ber, he had collected about a thousand fleas. In what he added 

 to this number by February of 1 9 8 , he could distinguish [19] 

 (in a paper of less than three pages!) six different species that 

 had lived upon almost as many different types of rats. He 

 noted, too, that the degree of infestation varied with the 

 season — against some ninety fleas picked from a single animal 



