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Chase, Marilyn
The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco
New York Random House 2003 0375504966 / 9780375504969 First Edition, First Printing Hard Cover Fine Fine Collectible
viii, 276 pp., [8] pp. of plates, illus., map, biblio., index; 25 cm. Tight, clean copy. Stated "First Edition." Dust jacket protected in a mylar book cover. "The plague first sailed into San Francisco on the steamer Australia, on the day after New Year's in 1900. Though the ship passed inspection, some of her stowaways - infected rats - escaped detection and made their way into the city's sewer system. Two months later, the first human case of bubonic plague surfaced in Chinatown. Initially in charge of the government's response was Quarantine Officer Dr. Joseph Kinyoun. An intellectually astute but autocratic scientist, Kinyoun lacked the diplomatic skill to manage the public health crisis successfully. He correctly diagnosed the plague, but because of his quarantine efforts, he was branded an alarmist and a racist, and was forced from his post. When a second epidemic erupted five years later, the more self-possessed and charming Dr. Rupert Blue was placed in command. He won the trust of San Franciscans by shifting the government's attack on the plague from the cool remove of the laboratory onto the streets, among the people it affected. Blue preached sanitation to contain the disease, but it was only when he focused his attack on the newly discovered source of the plague, infected rats and their fleas, that he finally eradicated it - truly one of the great, if little known, triumphs in American public health history. With stunning narrative immediacy fortified by rich research, Marilyn Chase transports us to the city during the late Victorian age - a roiling melting pot of races and cultures that, nearly destroyed by an earthquake, was reborn, thanks in no small part to Rupert Blue and his motley band of pied pipers. / Marilyn Chase, a longtime reporter for The Wall Street Journal, covers medical science and health care, currently focusing on infectious-disease outbreaks and bioterrorism. An honors graduate of Stanford Uni- versity who also holds a master's degree from the University of California at Berkeley, Chase lives with her family in San Francisco." - Publisher.
Price:
24.95 USD
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