764 
nature of things, have been attended with 
some commercial loss is obvious. The men 
who have maintained the existence of the 
disease have the interests of the State as 
closely at heart as have those who have 
opposed the diagnosis ; they differ in their 
convictions as to the best and least injuri- 
ous method of procedure. The men who 
have maintained the existence of plague 
reason thus: Plague is here; clinically, 
‘pathologically and bacteriologically it has 
Under the cir- 
cumstances the best method of procedure, 
been proved to be here. 
the one affording the best protection to the 
public health and the least injury to the 
business interests of the State, is to ac- 
knowledge the truth, undertake energetic 
measures, and clean and disinfect ‘ China- 
town’ in such a manner as to stamp out 
the disease at once. The opposition com- 
prises two sets of men. One set does not 
believe that plague is here, and for them 
there can be no necessity for hygienic 
action. Though honest in their convic- 
tions, it must be insisted on that the ex- 
istence of plague is a matter for scientific 
consideration, and is not within the scope 
of the judgment of business men. The sec- 
ond class realizes that the disease is present, 
but reasons that, as there are so few cases 
and as these are largely confined to Chi- 
nese, the situation is not serious and should 
be concealed in the hope that the disease 
will die out, and that public recognition 
and active hygienic measures should be 
deferred until the conditions become so 
serious that the public health is gravely 
jeopardized. The scientists know that 
there are but few cases, that the general 
SCIENCE. 
[N. S. Von. XIII. No. 333. 
health is not in serious danger, but believe 
it better to stamp out the infection while in 
its infancy, with the attendant small com- 
mercial loss, than to wait, in the hope that 
the disease will die out of its own accord, 
until the situation shall have become very 
serious, with the risk of overwhelming 
commercial losses in the event of a general- 
ization of the infection. 
There can be no question that the first 
course was the correct one. That now, one 
year after the trouble began, the State is 
compelled to do what it all along refused to 
do, undertake the hygienic renovation of 
‘Chinatown,’ isan obvious proof of the cor- 
rectness of the frank and open course. Had 
the Chinese section been promptly and ef- 
fectively cleaned one year ago, the disease 
would have been stamped out at little cost, 
and the episode would have been ere this 
forgotten. Atpresent the pall still hangs 
over California, and there is a general dis- 
trust of her on the part of the other 
States. 
ures will prove effective, and that the State 
We trust that the present meas- 
has escaped the occurrence of a serious epi- 
demic; but this escape will have been 
purely accidental, and in matters like these 
a community has not the right to trust to- 
the fortune of chance. 
Conditions have apparently not been 
favorable to the immediate spread of the dis- 
ease. This is, however, an old experience ; 
in many places and at many times the 
plague has dragged along for a long while, 
only to suddenly flare up into an active 
epidemic. The recent experience in Cape 
Town is a fresh illustration. The plague 
has been present and dragging along in 
