PROLOGUE
i. MBH,January 20, 1900, 189.
CHAPTER I
i. For an excellent overview of this pandemic, see Myron Echenberg, "Pestis Redux: The Initial Years of the Third Bubonic Plague Pandemic, 1894-1901," Journal of World History, Vol. 13, No. 2 (2002), 429-49, which also contains footnotes to the growing literature on this plague; and Carol Benedict, Bubonic Plague in Nineteenth-Century China (Stanford, 1996).
2. Li Ling Ai, Life Is for a Long Time: A Chinese Hawaiian Memoir (New York, 1972), 19; W. J. Simpson, Report on the Causes and Continuance of Plague in Hongkong and Suggestions as to Remedial Measures (London, 1903); M. D. Regan, The Whitewash Brigade: The Hong Kong Plague of 1894 (London, 1998).
3. On the symptoms of bubonic plague, see Paul D. Hoeprich et al., Infectious Diseases (Philadelphia, 1994), 1302-12; Sherwood L. Gorbach et al., Infectious Diseases (Philadelphia, 1998), 1568-75; and Gerald L. Mandell et al., Principles and Practice of Infectious Diseases (New York, 2000), 2406-14.
4. Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity (NewYork,1997) and Irvine Loudon, ed., Western Medicine (NewYork, 1997) are recent summaries of the long-standard position that the plague of the 189os was the same bubonic plague that caused the black death and subsequent pandemics. The World Health Organization (WHO) currently recognizes three historic periods of plague: the Justinian (sixth to eighth centuries); the black death (fourteenth to eighteenth centuries); and the contemporary (ca. 186o to the present). By making no distinctions among the three, WHO implies that the same disease caused them all. Recently, however, Samuel K. Cohn Jr. has amassed impressive evidence that the bubonic plague of the Middle Ages and the bubonic plague of modern times may have produced similar symptoms but could not reasonably have been the same disease. See Samuel K. Cohn Jr., "The Black Death: End of a Paradigm," American Historical Review, Vol. 107, No. 3 (June 2002), 703-38, and Cohn, The Black Death Transformed: Disease and Culture in Early Renaissance Europe (London and New York, 2002). Medical literature suggests that bubonic plague is capable of mutating quite rapidly into variant strains. See, for example, Guiyoule et al., "Recent Emergence of New Variants of Yersinia Pestis in Madagascar," journal of Clinical Microbiology, Vol. 35 (November 1997), 2826-33, and Perry and Fetherston, "Yersinia Pestis-Etiological Agent of Plague," Clinical Microbiology Review, Vol. io (January 1997), 35-66.
5. David J. Bibel and T. H. Chen, "Diagnosis of Plague: an Analysis of the Yersin-Kitasato Controversy," Bacteriological Reviews, Vol. 40, No. 3 (September 1976), 633-51; Norman Howard Jones, "Kitasato, Yersin, and the Plague Bacillus," Clio Medica, Vol. io, No 1 (1975), 23-27; Paul Hauduroy, "Comment Alexandre Yersin decouvrit le microbe de la peste," Yersin et la peste (Lausanne, 1944); James R. Bartholomew, "The Acculturation of Science in Japan: Kitasato Shibasaburo and the Japanese Bacteriological Community, 1885-1920" (Ph.D. diss., Stanford, 1971); Edward Marriott, The Plague Race: A Tale of Fear, Science, and Heroism (London, 2002). Yersin's strain was subsequently determined to be the actual cause of the disease.
6. "Microbe of the Plague, magnified 20,000 diameters," and the story about Yersin in PCA, December 16, 1899; see also EBU, December 12, 1899.
7. For an excellent discussion of this process and the epidemiological impact of different flea species in spreading plague, see Marilyn Chase, The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco (New York, 2003),188-91. The flea vector was strongly suspected from 1904 onward, and finally proven by the British Commission for the Investigation of Plague in India. See also Robert Barde, "Prelude to the Plague: Public Health and Politics at America's Pacific Gateway, 1899,",OHM, Vol. 58, No. 2 (April 2003), 153-86; Mary P. Sutphen, "Not What, but Where: Bubonic Plague and the Reception of Germ Theories in Hong Kong and Calcutta, 1894-1897," JHM, Vol. 52, No. i (January 1997), 81-113-
8. Simpson, Report on the Causes, especially p. 8; Walter Wyman, The Bubonic Plague (Washington, D.C., 1900). Wyman had been publishing versions of these arguments elsewhere since at least 1896. A. Shadwell, "The Plague in Oporto," Nineteenth Century, Vol. XLVI (July-December 1899), 846. For evidence of persistent confusion on the subject of rats and plague, even among well-informed physicians, see an undated letter from James J. Molony to Clifford B. Wood about the death of a Chinese passenger aboard a ship. Molony served as the ship's doctor during this period. Molony File, MAM; C. Marsh-Beadnell, "The Prevention of Bubonic Plague," British Medical Journal (1904), 1133. For public confusion in Honolulu, see "Some Notes on Plague," AHW (December 16, 1899), 3
9. Ann Marcovich, "French Colonial Medicine and Colonial Rule: Algeria and Indochina," in Roy Macleod and Milton Lewis, eds., Disease, Medicine, and Empire: Perspectives on Western Medicine and the Experience of European Expansion (London and New York, 1988), 103-17; Radhika Ramasubban, "Imperial Health in British India, 1857-1900," in Macleod and Lewis, pp. 38-60. See among many examples: A. K. Chalmers, "Actions Taken at Glasgow to Stamp Out Plague," Public Health [New York], (December 1900), 183-87, and "Directions for Combating Plague," forwarded to Washington, D.C., by the U.S. consul-general in Berlin and later reprinted in United States Public Health Reports, Vol. 17, part 2 (1902), 2371-73. "Report on the International Sanitary Conference Held at Venice (February 16 to March 19, 1897)," United States Public Health Reports, Vol. 12 (1897), 452-59. On the international politics of quarantine during the nineteenth century, see Peter Baldwin, Contagion and the State in Europe, 1830-1930 (Cambridge, 1999).
10. Guenter Risse, "No Burning: Race, Public Health and Civil Rights in San Francisco's Chinatown, 1900," paper presented at the Policy History Conference, St. Louis, Mo., May 31, 2002.
11. "Stop the Asiatics," AHW (January 20, 1900), 1; "The Grim Visitor," AHW (December 16, 1899), 2; IND, December 13, 1899, p. 3; Anna Leadingham to unknown, n.d. [ca. December 30, 1899, on the basis of internal evidence], Manuscript Collections, HHS.
12. Clarence E. Glick, Sojourners and Settlers: Chinese Migrants in Hawaii (Honolulu, 1980), table io, p. 128.
13. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Twelfth Census of the United States, Vol. i (Washington, D.C., 1901), 613; Andrew W. Lind, Hawaii's People (Honolulu, 1967), 50. Honolulu was in the process of taking a city census of its own when the plague struck. For preliminary reports of that tally, see FRI, Vol. 58, No. 2 (February 1900). An excellent indication of urban sprawl can be gained from "Map of Honolulu Showing Progress of Sewer Construction, 1899-1900," opposite page 310 in "Report of the Governor of Hawaii," Annual Reports of the Department of the Interior, 1901 (Washington, D.C., 1901). One citizen did have a battery-powered car in 1898. See Edward B. Scott, The Saga of the Sandwich Islands, Vol. i (Lafayette, Ind., 1968), 2 98.
14. D[uncan] A. Carmichael, "Report of Transactions at Honolulu, H. I. [October 2, 1898 to October 31, 18991," in Annual Report of the Supervising SurgeonGeneral of the Marine-Hospital Service of the United States for the Fiscal Year 1899 (Washington, D.C., 1901), 44; U.S. House Documents, 66 (1897), 55th Congress, 2nd Session, No. 483, p. 1248•
15. [C. E. Mann], "Report of Maj. C. E. Mann concerning conditions, sanitary and medical, in Honolulu and the Hawaiian islands," Report of the SurgeonGeneral of the Army to the Secretary of War, 1896 (Washington, D.C., 1896), 128-30. On the inspection system, see Robert Barde, "Prelude to Plague: Public Health and Politics at America's Pacific Gateway, 1899," JHM, Vol. 58, No. 2 (April 2003), 156.
CHAPTER 2
i. The following brief account of Hawaiian history at the end of the nineteenth century rests upon several previous studies. Among them are Liliuokalani, Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen (reprint of 1898 edition; Rutland, Vt., and Tokyo, 1989); Ralph S. Kuykendall and A. Grove Day, Hawaii: A History (New York, 1948); Lawrence H. Fuchs, Hawaii Pono: "Hawaii the Excellent": An Ethnic and Political History (Honolulu, 1961); Gavan Daws, Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands (New York, 1968); Olive Wyndette, Islands of Destiny: A History of Hawaii (Rutland, Vt., and Tokyo, 1968); Albertine Loomis, For Whom Are the Stars? (Honolulu, 1976);
Noel Kent, Hawaii: Islands Under the Influence (New York, 1983); Rich Budnick, Stolen Kingdom: An American Conspiracy (Honolulu, 1992); Michael Dougherty, To Steal a Kingdom (Waimanalo, Hawaii, 1992); Lilikala Kame'eleihiwa, Native Land and Foreign Desire (Honolulu, 1992); Michael G. Vann, "Contesting Cultures and Defying Dependency: Migration, Nationalism, and Identity in Late 19th Century Hawaii," Stanford Humanities Review, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1997); Haunani-Kay Trask, From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawaii (Honolulu, 1999).
2. On Dole, see also Helena G. Allen, Sanford Ballard Dole: Hawaii's Only President, 1844-192 6 (Glendale, Calif., 1988) and Ethel M. Damon, Sanford Ballard Dole and His Hawaii, with an Analysis of Justice Dole's Legal Opinions (Alto, Calif., 1957). On Thurston, see also Lorrin A. Thurston, Memoirs of the Hawaiian Revolution (Honolulu, 1936) and Andrew Farrell, ed., Writings of Lorrin A. Thurston (Honolulu, 1936).
3. On the "whitening" of the Portuguese, see an editorial in IND, January 22, 1900, 4, deploring "the unpardonable ignorance" of those in Honolulu who continued to "talk about `white' people in contrast to `Portuguese."'
4. "Auwe ka Pilikia o ka Lahui [The Crisis of Our People]," KAA, January 27, 1900, 2, 7-
5. Albert P. Taylor, "The Impress of Cathay in the Hawaiian Islands," in [Overseas Penman Club], The Chinese of Hawaii (Honolulu, 1929), 8; Tin-Yuke Char, The Sandalwood Mountains: Readings and Stories of the Early Chinese in Hawaii (Honolulu, 1975), 287•
6. On the rapid economic ascent of the Chinese in Honolulu, which was abundantly evident in the i 89os, see Clarence E. Glick, Sojourners and Settlers: Chinese Migrants in Hawaii (Honolulu, 1980), 67-101; Frances Carter, Francis Woo, and Puanani Woo, Exploring Honolulu's Chinatown (Honolulu, 1988), 9; Mui King-Chau, "The Chinese as Builders of Hawaii," Pan-Pacific, Vol. i, No. 3 (October-December 1937), in Nancy Foon Young, ed., Asian Americans in Hawaii (Honolulu, 1975), 39•
7. On Ah Leong and Hong Quon, see Chung Kun Ai, My Seventy-Nine Years in Hawaii (Hong Kong, 1960), 189-90. On Wong Chow, see [Overseas Penman Club], The Chinese of Hawaii, 9.
8. Char, Sandalwood Mountains, Appendix G, 2 88-92; "Voice of the Chinese Colony Declares Itself in a Big Mass Meeting," in Young, 67-70.
9. James G. Y. Ho, "Downtown Historic Anecdotes: Honolulu Chinatown Fires of 1886-1900-1902," Downtown Planet (November 4, 2002), 7, 13; telephone conversation with Ho, November 13, 2002. Ho is president and historian of the Hawaiian Chinese Multicultural Museum and Archives in Honolulu and has been collecting oral histories in the city's Chinese community since the 195os.
1o. Lorrin A. Thurston, A Hand-book on the Annexation of Hawaii (St. Joseph, Mich., 1897)-
ii. For an excellent discussion of the congressional debates over how to handle forms of government for the various island territories acquired during this period, see Lanny Thompson, "The Imperial Republic: A Comparison of the Insular Territories under U.S. Dominion after 1898," Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 71, No. 4 (November 2002), 535-74•
12. Fifty-fifth Congress, Sess. II, Res. 55, 1898.
CHAPTER 3
i. For a report on the Nippon Maru incident in Honolulu, see Carmichael File, MAM.
2. The Nippon Maru touched off a public dispute in San Francisco. See Robert Barde, "Prelude to Plague: Public Health and Politics at America's Pacific Gateway, 1899," ,OHM, Vol. 58, No. 2 (April 2003), 153-86; and Marilyn Chase, The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco (New York, 2003), 12, 28.
3. HIN, 425-
4. For the Manchuria rumor, see Li Ling Ai, Life Is for a Long Time: A Chinese Hawaiian Memoir (New York, 1972), 169; M.J. Keeling and C. A. Gilligant, "Metapopulation Dynamics of Bubonic Plague," Nature, Vol. 407 (2000), 903-6.
5. Gu Jinhui, Tan Dao 3i Shi [Historical Record of Hawaii] (Shanghai, 1907 [reprint 1988]), 141. Gu's text used the term shi zheng to describe these initial opinions, in contrast to the phrase wen yu, implying a more disastrous epidemic, which he subsequently applied to the plague itself; Li, Life Is for a Long Time, 170-71. Jerome J. Platt, Maurice E. Jones, and Arleen Kay Platt, The Whitewash Brigade: The Hong Kong Plague of 1894 (London, 1998), 48. The plant used was probably Isatidis Radix, imported from China.
6. Clarence E. Glick, Sojourners and Settlers: Chinese Migrants in Hawaii (Honolulu, 1980), 233.
7. Dole to Baker, July 30, 1895, Dole Papers, HMC.
8. [C. E. Mann], "Report of Maj. C. E. Mann concerning conditions, sanitary and medical, in Honolulu and the Hawaiian islands," Report of the SurgeonGeneral of the Army to the Secretary of War, 1896 (Washington, D.C., 1896), 128-30; Frederick L. Hoffman, The Sanitary Progress and Vital Statistics of Hawaii (Honolulu, 1915)•
9. Dole to Baker, Oct. 17, 1895, Dole Papers, HMC.
Io. Glick, Sojourners and Settlers, 232-35.
i i. Li, Life Is for a Long Time, 14-
I2. On the Canton Medical School, see Chimin K. Wong and Lien-The Wu, History of Chinese Medicine (National Quarantine Service, Shanghai, 1936), passim and 375-76 for the link to German missionary societies.
13. Li, Life Is for a Long Time, 19.
14. Li File, MAM.
15. Li, Life Is for a Long Time, 1-36, 60-72, 92-96, 100, 133-83, 191-204-
16. Herbert File, MAM.
17. The English-language press reported only that "a Chinese doctor" informed the Board members, but several sources closer to the Chinese situation, including Li's daughter, confirmed that Li was the physician who went to the Board. See Li, Life Is for a Long Time, 168-73; Li File, MAM; PCA, December 13, 1899, 1) 9.
18. Li, Life Is for a Long Time, 168-73; KAA, December 16, 1899, 5•
iq. MBH, 10e-4.
20. PCA, December 13, 1899; "Poha ka Mai Fiva Eleele ... [Black Fever Erupts]," KAA, December 16, 1899, 3•
21. AHW, January 20, 1goo, 1; PCA, December 13, 1899, 1-3-
CHAPTER 4
i. Most of the biographical information that follows is from the Emerson File, MAM. Material from other sources will be cited separately.
2. Minutes of the Board of Health Meetings, July i, 1868 to June 25, 1881, 180, 182, 186, 211, HSA.
3. I am grateful to Heidi Lyons of the Boston University Alumni Medical Library for information about Peirce's medical education. On Sarah Eliza Peirce Emerson generally, see http://hml.org/mmhc/mdindex/semerson.html, accessed April 4, 2003; [Polk] Husted's Directory of Honolulu and Hawaiian Territory, 1900/01 (Honolulu, 1901), 54-
4. Olive Wyndette, Islands of Destiny: A History of Hawaii (Rutland, Vt., and Tokyo, 1968), 203-4; FRI, February 1894, 10-
5- Minutes of the Meetings of the Board of Health, June 25, 1881 to Dec. 31, 1888, ioi, HSA; PCA, November 21, 1887-
6. Nathaniel Emerson, The Long Voyages of the Ancient Hawaiians (Honolulu, 1893). This was an expanded version of a paper he read before the Hawaiian Historical Society on May 18, 1893. In 1903, Emerson translated David Malo's Moolelo Hawaii as Hawaiian Antiquities, and the Bureau of American Ethnography published Emerson's Unwritten Literature of Hawaii: Sacred Songs of the Hula (Washington, D.C., 1909) He wrote many other similar pieces. His papers, which are valued primarily for their Hawaiian-language materials, are now at the Huntington Library.
7- Minutes of the Meetings of the Board of Health, June 25, 1881 to Dec. 31, 1888, 140, HSA.
8. Day File, MAM; "In Memoriam: Francis Root Day, M.D.," a pamphlet in the Frances L. Folsom Papers, Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society Archives, Buffalo, New York.
9. Wood File, MAM.
io. See Hawaiian Almanac and Annual (Honolulu), Thomas G. Thrum, compiler, for the years 1897-1900.
i i. Carmichael File, MAM; D[uncan]. A. Carmichael, "Report of Transactions at the Port of Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, During the Fiscal Year ended June 30, 1900," in Annual Report of the Supervising Surgeon-General of the Marine-Hospital Service of the United States for the Fiscal Year 1900 (Washington, D.C., 1900), 440-43. On the evolution of the Marine Hospital Service, see Bess Furman, A Profile of the United States Public Health Service, 17981948 (W
ashington, D.C., 1973), 234; Ralph Chester Williams, The United States Public Health Service, 1798-1950 (Washington, D.C., 1951), 262-70; and John Parascandola, "Public Health Service," in George Thomas Kurian, editor-in-chief, A Historical Guide to the U.S. Government (New York, 1998), 487-93-
12. C. E. Camp to Walter Wyman, October io, 1899, MHS.
13. Carmichael File, MAM.
14. Hoffman File, MAM.
CHAPTER 5
i. PCA, December 13, 1899, 1; December 15, 1899, 4-
2. See, for example, an editorial in IND, January 3, 1900, 4, which justified "steady blows" against plague, lest Honolulu end up like Hong Kong, where plague in some form had held on for "the past two hundred years"; IND, December 13, 1899, 3-
3- On the fear among nonwhites, see "Ache Laau Lapaau no ka Hoola Ana i Keia Ano Mai Weliweli [No Medication to Treat This Dreadful Disease]," KAA, December 16, 1899, 5; HGZ, December 15, 1899, 4; PCA, December 15, 1899, 4; EBU, December 12,1899,4; IND, December 13, 1899, 3-
4. HIN, 427-
5- MBH, December 12, 1899, 103; D. W. Ketcham, Adjutant, Order No. 270, December 13, 1899; Blair D. Taylor to Surgeon General, December 15, 18, and 22, 1899, MHS.
6. For an excellent discussion of this mind-set, see Mary P. Sutphen, "Not What, but Where: Bubonic Plague and the Reception of Germ Theories in Hong Kong and Calcutta, 1894-1897," JHM, Vol. 52, No. i (January 1997), 81113; similar ideas are explored in Susan Craddock, City of Plagues: Disease, Poverty, and Deviance in San Francisco (Minneapolis, 200o); HIN, 428.
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