beecheyi) of California. There can be no further 1 'X'X 



doubt, therefore, he writes, that these rodents are an 

 important factor in the dissemination of infection. 



Practically the same findings have been obtained 

 by Acting Assistant Surgeon Wherry in the Oak- 

 land laboratory, and are reported under date of 

 August 24 [/] 1908. [Italics mine.] 



The following is the report, dated August 27 

 [!] 1908, of Passed Assistant Surgeon McCoy on 

 the examination of the tissue from the squirrel sus- 

 pected of being infected with plague. . . . 



It was to be a long time before the simple fact that Wherry- 

 had been the first to prove the existence of plague in the ground 

 squirrel was to be written out in plain English ; yet longer before 

 it was to be told that he had thereby explained the appearance 

 of human plague sporadically at inland points, that the west 

 coast was now to be considered an "endemic" source of plague, 

 that plague "prevention" measures were due for a twist. 



John D Long saw the point. If not with his connivance, it 

 was at least with his silent consent that Wherry asked me to 

 take a hand in bringing the new crisis in California to more 

 general notice. Not bound, as was he, to the higher authority 

 of federal government (I was a plague inspector by state 

 appointment), I wrote Samuel Hopkins Adams. A chief 

 among the "muckrakers," he was interested. But he was on 

 his way to Europe, and would turn over my letter to Norman 

 Hapgood, then the able editor of Collier's Weekly. Hapgood, 

 too, saw the point and after an editorial sent C P Connolly to 

 San Francisco's bay district to investigate. Convinced, he 

 wrote an article for his magazine in the issue of November 9, 

 1908. Excellent in its statement of the general situation, 

 effective action that might have resulted therefrom was largely 

 blocked — by telegrams received from the mayor of San 

 Francisco, the mayor of Oakland, the commanding officer of 

 the U S public health service in the city by the Golden Gate. 



DECEMBER 18, 1908, Wherry's own story [21] of 

 Plague among the ground squirrels of California, 

 appeared. The manuscript of the "temporarily acting assistant 



