762 
disease in the Orient by Yersin and Haff- 
kine, and by the various plague commis- 
sions which were sent to the Orient by 
various European governments for the 
study of plague; in short, the diagnosis 
was established precisely as it was in 
India, China, Japan, Portugal, Alexan- 
dria, Sydney and Cape Town; and the fact 
that the scientific methods, which in the 
countries quoted are unreservedly accepted 
as trustworthy and reliable, were in San 
Francisco disregarded and ridiculed is a 
sad commentary upon that portion of the 
medical profession which maintained the 
negative attitude. 
Fearing that the State Board of Health 
might quarantine the city and that other 
States might quarantine the city, or even the 
State, to the vast injury of public and com- 
mercial interests, the commercial interests 
of the city solicited the establishment by 
the City Board of Health of a quarantine of 
‘Chinatown,’ the portion of the city oc- 
cupied by the Chinese in which all the 
reported cases had occurred. This request 
was acceded to, and the quarantine was 
established. At the solicitation of the rail- 
way companies, the Marine Hospital Service, 
through its surgeon-general in Washington, 
though against the protest of the surgeon 
stationed at Angel Island, laid a similar 
quarantine against ‘Chinatown.’ The pub- 
lic was given to understand that plague 
was a disease of frightful contagiousness 
and rapid spread, and that this quarantine 
was necessary to prevent the spread of the 
disease through the entire city. The quar- 
antine, though inadequately enforced and 
obviously ineffective, was quite naturally 
SCIENCE. 
[N. S. Von. XIII. No. 333. 
obnoxious to the Chinese residents of the 
quarantined area, and they sought relief in 
the courts. 
In the opinion rendered upon the case, 
Judge Morrow decided the establishment 
and maintenance of the quarantine illegal, 
but marred what was, under the laws, a 
correct decision by the prejudicial and 
unwarranted statement that no cases of 
plague had existed in San Francisco. 
That the quarantine was, in the light of 
our knowledge of plague and in the light 
of the Oriental experiences with the disease, 
an unwarranted and mistaken procedure 
is obvious. As arule plague is not a per- 
sonal infection, it is a house infection ; the 
best evidence of this fact is the statement 
of one of the Huropean commissions that 
about the safest place in Bombay is the 
plague hospital. As a general rule plague 
may be said to become a personal infection 
only when the pneumonic form is prevalent, 
and even under such circumstances the 
sensitiveness of the Bacillus pestis to sun- 
light and desiccation renders the infectious- 
ness of the disease much less than is ob- 
As stated, 
the public in San Francisco had been led to 
served with other infections. 
believe that plague was a disease of fright- 
ful contagiousness; when then the quaran- 
tine was raised, and the Chinese population 
was allowed to go where it chose in the 
light of the aforestated information, the 
disease was expected to spread at once 
through the city. It did, of course, nothing 
of the sort. And naturally the general 
public at once lost confidence in the local 
board of health and in the correctness of 
the diagnosis. 
