Biology and Medicine 459 



defense, it found divided forces among which the question 

 of its presence became the subject of factional dispute. There 

 was open popular hostility to the work of the sanitarians, 

 and war among the City, State, and Federal health authorities. 



"A federal health officer was arrested for trying to do his 

 duty as he saw it. Eugene Schmitz, while mayor, refused to 

 approve the printing of health reports and vital statistics 

 and attempted to remove from office four members of the 

 Board of Health who persisted in the statement that plague 

 existed in the City. The State bacteriologist, Ryfkogel, found 

 plague germs and lost his position and part of his back salary. 



"The public drew its inferences from the voluminous mis- 

 information furnished by the disputants. Plague was said 

 to be a mediaeval disease. It belonged to the days of Charle- 

 magne or James II before the common people had soap. It 

 was an Oriental disease, peculiar to rice-eaters. It was, a 

 Mongolian or Hindu disease, and never attacked whites. In 

 San Francisco it was not a disease at all it was graft. 

 Landlords of Chinatown rat warrens contended fiercely that 

 their premises were perfectly sanitary because the plumbing 

 was vented. 



"For a while the people were in the gravest danger and 

 it seemed impossible to convey any adequate warnings to 

 them. Intimations from medical conventions of Eastern 

 State boards of health that unless San Franciscans got to- 

 gether and stamped out the plague, it would be necessary 

 to enforce a general quarantine against the City, actually 

 brought forth a demand from certain quarters that the 

 Marine Hospital fellows go back to Washington where they 

 belonged." 11 



Without the necessary power to act in the case the local 

 health authorities called upon the U. S. Public Health Serv- 

 ice, with the result that Doctor Rupert Blue was placed in 

 charge with full authority to act. Doctor Blue immediately 

 instituted a relentless war upon the rats which infested the 

 city, with the result that the disease was soon entirely eradi- 

 cated. As illustrative of the role of the rat in the spread of 

 plague in San Francisco the following data are quoted from 

 Doctor Blue's reports. 



"Two small boys (October, 1907) while playing in an 

 unused cellar found the body of a dead rat. The corpse 

 was buried with unusual funeral honors. In forty-eight 

 hours both were ill with bubonic plague. A laborer finding 

 a sick rat on the wharf picked it up with the naked hand 

 and threw it into the bay. He was seized three days later 

 with plague. Doctor C. and family lived in a second-story 



""Eradicating Plague from San Francisco," Report of the Citizens' 

 Health Committee, pp. 30-31. 



