1907 — May 27-Dec, Bubonic Plague Epidemic, San Francisco, California –77-96

–190 Sommer. “Petaluma’s Past: The Black Plague in 1907.” Argus Courier, Petaluma. 4-17-2020.
— 96 Kohn. Encyclopedia of Plague and Pestilence From Ancient Times… (Rev.). 2001, p. 294.
— 78 Markel. When Germs Travel – Six Major Epidemics… 2004, p. 76.
— 78 Shah. Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race…San Francisco’s Chinatown. 2001, 155.
— 77 Kellogg. “Present Status of Plague, With Historical Review.” Amer. Pub. Health Assn., 1920.
— 77 San Francisco Citizens Health Committee. Eradicating Plague from [SF]. 3-31-1909, p9.
— 77 Smith. “Today in Science History: The 1907 San Francisco Plague.” Forbes, 5-37-2017.
–Smith dates the epidemic from May 27, 1907 to Jan 30, 1908.

Narrative Information

Kellogg: “….we have a history of events in 1907 and 1908 that is in marked contrast to that of 1900 and 1901….The epidemic lasted six months, and the total number of cases was 160, with 77 deaths; this time not in the Chinese quarter alone, but scattered all through the city. The last case of the series occurred on June 30, 1908. During the year 1907 seven cases were found in Seattle, Wash. ….” (Kellogg. “Present Status of Plague, With Historical Review.” Amer. Pub. Health Assn., 1920, p. 835.)

Kohn: “San Francisco Plague of 1907-09

“Severe epidemic of bubonic plague that infected 205 inhabitants of San Francisco and killed 103 of them [96 in 1907]….The 1907-09 plague’s fatality rate was 51 percent, which is typical for this highly contagious disease, against which sulfa drugs and some antibiotics are effective….

“…fleas transmitted the plague bacillus (Yersinia pestis) through their bite….

“The plague epidemic got underway within a year [of the 1906 earthquake]…a 24-year-old sailor from an oceangoing tugboat entered the U.S. Marine Hospital in San Francisco only to die later of the plague. A 50-year-old man who became ill with plague on August 1, 1907, died by October. Shortly after this man took ill, a sailor from the S.S. Samoa died of the plague in the Marine Hospital; no other cases developed on the ship, which was quarantined. Eventually plague cases were reported in different places throughout the city; 25 cases developed from August 1 to September 4, 1907.

“….Clinical tests performed on samplings of rats revealed a dangerously high level of plague at the end of 1907; by then, 190 persons had been reported with plague and 96 of them died.

“….Laws were passed requiring private and public sanitation measures, such as covered garbage cans, rat trapping, and concrete floors for stables and chicken yards. A new sewer system was built for the city, and a plague hospital was established. By June 1908, some 1,700 people suspected of carrying plague had been examined, and some 100,000 rats had been trapped. By April 1909, the plague had ended…

“Further reading: Ackerknecht, History and Geography of the Most Important Diseases; Gregg, Plague: An Ancient Disease in the Twentieth Century.” (Kohn. Encyclopedia of Plague. 2001, 294.)

Markel: “Bubonic plague struck San Francisco once again in 1907 with 160 cases and 78 deaths. In this instance almost all the victims were white Americans and the public health approach was markedly different [than in 1900-1904]. But by this point in history, British epidemiologists in India had worked out the role of rats and fleas in spreading the disease. With excellent rat proofing, extermination, and sanitation methods, the 1907-1908 bubonic plague battle became a war against rats, fleas, and filth as opposed to a crusade against immigrants.” (Markel 2006, p. 76.)

San Francisco Citizens Health Committee: “Bubonic plague reappeared in San Francisco in May, 1907. While the second outbreak may have resulted from reinfection, apparently it was a recrudescence of the Chinatown epidemic of 1900, which had been confined to about twenty blocks of the Oriental quarter, had claimed 121 victims, mostly Asiatics, of whom but eight recovered, and which by February 1904, had been suppressed by the vigorous measures of the City, State and Federal health authorities under the direction, at first, of Dr. A. H. Glennan, Surgeon U.S. Public Health and Marine Hospital Service, now Assistant Surgeon-General, and afterward of his executive officer and successor in San Francisco, Passed Assistant Surgeon Rupert Blue.

“In its second eruption the pest was not confined to Chinatown, but reappeared at different times in practically all parts of the city, with the exception of the Richmond and Sunset districts. Very few Orientals were affected, almost all of the 160 human cases, of which 77 died, being white persons, many of them of a good condition of life, subsisting on generous diet and dwelling in houses that would commonly be called ‘sanitary.’

“The difference in mortality was probably due not so much to race or condition, but to early discovery and prompt treatment, while the causes of the change in the point of attack, from the Oriental to the white population, are now well understood and demonstrate the correctness of the defense measures adopted.

“It was with the second outbreak that the work of the Citizens’ Health Committee of twenty-five had to do. This work was essentially social in character, its purpose being to bring about a general co-operation of the people of the city with the sanitary authorities. Its most distinct aim was to organize the community for the starving and destroying of rats. It was an enterprise with no guiding precedents among white populations, and one in which the means of organization, of educating the public to a knowledge of its danger and its defense, and of promoting effective action, had to be improvised in the face of prejudice and a growing peril

“To-day there is no plague in San Francisco, and no plague-infected rats are to be found here….”
(San Francisco Citizens Health Committee. Eradicating Plague from San Francisco. 3-31-1909, pp. 9-10.)

Sommer: “The Bubonic (or “Black”) Plague had first hit San Francisco in 1899 (especially hard in Chinatown), and was finally thought to be under control by 1904. But then, the Great Earthquake of 1906 devastated the city and by the following year, with San Francisco in ruins and people necessarily huddled together, infected rats were multiplying by the millions. The Plague became rampant once again….

“The date was May 27, 1907, when a sailor on San Francisco Bay was the first to be diagnosed with Bubonic Plague. Within just one month, the disease had spread so rapidly it looked as if the city “were to be as decimated, as was Medieval Europe,” according to newspaper reports of the time….

“Chinese immigrants were the first to be blamed for the San Francisco plague. It was another cog in California’s discrimination against them, which had been happening since 1849. Our Petaluma Courier even dubbed it ‘The Yellow Plague,’ but the illness was not discriminatory and over 190 people of all stripes, died in San Francisco just that summer.

“And they had been very painful deaths. Scientists eventually determined that the disease was spread by rodents’ fleas. Flea bites, and just inhaling the air around those fleas, would infect human lymph nodes, cause them to painfully swell, turn black and result in patient death. But it took two years for that theory to become accepted, and the third pandemic wasn’t deemed fully over here until 1910.

“Interestingly, only 10% of US “doctors” had attended a medical school then, and some were even treating those enlarged nodes as blisters, lancing them, and thus causing even wider spread of the disease.

“The resulting extermination of rats in San Francisco became an all-out war, with over 2,000,000 rats killed. The cost of that “Rat War” had been $50,000 per month and the Federal Government had kicked-in to help. Petaluma did its share of local disease prevention by stopping all incoming river craft from San Francisco at our D Street Bridge, and thoroughly searching them for rats. US life expectancy in ’07 was just 45.6 years for males and 50 for females….” (Sommer, Skip. “Petaluma’s Past: The Black Plague in 1907.” Argus Courier, Petaluma. 4-17-2020.)

Sources

Kellogg, W. H., M.D. (Director Bureau of Communicable Diseases, State Board of Health, Sacramento, CA). “Present Status of Plague, With Historical Review.” Paper read before General Session of meeting of the American Public Health Association, 9-15-1920. Pp. 835-844 in The American Journal of Public Health, Vol. 10, No. 11, Nov 1920. Accessed 3-25-2021 at: https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.10.11.835

Kohn, George Childs (Ed.). Encyclopedia of Plague and Pestilence From Ancient Times to the Present (Revised Edition). NY: Checkmark Books, 2001.

Markel, Howard. When Germs Travel – Six Major Epidemics That Have Invaded America Since 1900 and the Fears They Have Unleashed. New York: Pantheon, 2004.

San Francisco Citizens Health Committee. Eradicating Plague from San Francisco: Report of the Citizens’ Health Committee and an Account of its Work. 3-31-1909, 313 pages. Accessed 3-25-2021 at: http://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/eradicating_plague_from_san_francisco_1909.pdf

Shah, Nayan. Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. 2001.

Smith, Kiona N. “Today in Science History: The 1907 San Francisco Plague.” Forbes, 5-37-2017. Accessed 3-24-2021 at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kionasmith/2017/05/27/today-in-science-history-the-1907-san-francisco-plague/?sh=257175412a7b

Sommer, Skip. “Petaluma’s Past: The Black Plague in 1907.” Argus Courier, Petaluma. 4-17-2020. Accessed 3-25-2021 at: https://www.petaluma360.com/article/entertainment/petalumas-past-the-black-plague-in-1907/