HISTORICAL. 7 



no less an authority than Noah Webster makes the following declaration: 

 "All the great plagues which have afflicted mankind have been accompanied 

 with violent agitations of the elements. The phenomenon most generally 

 and closely connected with pestilence is an earthquake. From all the facts 

 which I can find in history, I question whether an instance of any considerable 

 plague, in any country, can be mentioned which has not been immediately 

 preceded by, or accompanied with, convulsions of the earth. If any excep- 

 tions have occurred, they have escaped my researches. It does not happen 

 that every place where pestilence prevails is shaken; but during the progress 

 of the disease which I denominate pestilence, and which runs, in certain 

 periods, over large portions of the globe, some parts of the earth, and especi- 

 ally those which abound most with subterranean fire, are violently agitated." 

 Were Noah Webster alive, he would certainly cite the recent plague on the 

 Pacific Coast as bearing out his assertions. On April 18, 1906, the coast 

 region about San Francisco was certainly "violently agitated," and this phe- 

 nomenon was followed by the plague (black pest, bubonic plague). But 

 what were the actual facts? The plague had, in all probability, existed in a 

 sporadic form in "Chinatown," in San Francisco, and in other places on the 

 Pacific coast for many years. In 1903 several authentic cases came to notice 

 and were reported. The reasons why the disease had not previously gained 

 a stronger foothold in San Francisco are several. Chinatown is more or less 

 isolated (socially, at least) from the rest of the city, and the poorer, more 

 filthy class of the Chinese do not as a rule mingle with the white population. 

 The disease is an Oriental filth disease. After the earthquake and fire of 

 April 18-22, 1906, the Chinese of all classes, the plague-infected rats and 

 fleas of the Chinese quarters, became thoroughly intermingled with the 

 rest of the stricken population, and as a result there were established several 

 new foci of plague infection, which accounted for the increase in plague 

 cases in 1907, a condition which was soon under control, thanks to the 

 strenuous efforts of the federal government, the board of health, and various 

 citizens' organizations 



Several writers of remote times, as well as occasional writers of the dark 

 and middle ages, held the opinion that the cause of disease, the disease- 

 producing effluvias, might be carried long distances by air currents, in ships, 

 or by caravans, and that the poison may enter the system via the air pas- 

 sages, through the skin, or through the digestive tract. Hodges, an English- . 

 man, who wrote a treatise on the London plague of 1665, declared that some 

 essential alteration in the air is necessary to the propagation of this disease. 

 That is, the " nitro-aerial " principle, which causes or invigorates plant and 

 animal life, is supposed to become vitiated. 



The corrupting principle is a "subtle aura or vapor" which is "extricated 

 from the bowels of the earth." This plague-causing poison was said to 



