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The San Francisco plague of 1900–1904 was an epidemic of bubonic plague centered on San Francisco's Chinatown. It was the first plague epidemic in the continental United States. The epidemic was recognized by medical authorities in March 1900, but its existence was denied for more than two years by Henry Gage, the Governor of California. His denial was based on business reasons: the wish to keep the reputations of San Francisco and California clean and to prevent the loss of revenue from trade stopped by quarantine. The failure to act quickly may have allowed the disease to establish itself among local animal populations.〔Echenberg 2007, p. 237〕 Federal authorities worked to build a case to prove that there was a major medical health problem, and they isolated the affected area. Proof that an epidemic was occurring served to undermine the credibility of Gage, and he lost the governorship in the 1902 elections. The new governor, George Pardee, quietly implemented a medical solution and the epidemic was stopped in 1904. There were 121 cases identified, including 113 deaths.〔Echenberg 2007, p. 231〕 After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, much of urban San Francisco was destroyed by fire, including all of the Chinatown district. The process of rebuilding began immediately but took several years. While reconstruction was in full swing, a second plague epidemic hit San Francisco in May and August 1907 but it was not centered in Chinatown. Rather, cases occurred randomly throughout the city; a few more cases were identified across the bay in Oakland. San Francisco's politicians and press reacted very differently this time: they wanted the problem solved speedily. Health authorities worked quickly to assess and eradicate the disease. To control one of the disease's vectors, some $2 million was spent between 1907 and 1911 to kill as many rats as possible in the city. By the end of the second plague outbreak in June 1908, 160 more cases had been identified, including 78 deaths, a much lower mortality rate than 1900–1904. This time, all of the infected people were Caucasian.〔 Shortly thereafter, the California ground squirrel was identified as another vector of the disease.〔 The initial denial and obstructionist response to the 1900 infection may have allowed the pathogen to gain its first toehold in North America, from which it spread sporadically to other states in the form of sylvatic plague (rural plague), though it is possible the squirrel population infection predated 1900.〔 ==Background== (詳細はHong Kong, a major trade port between China and the US.〔Echenberg 2007, p. 6〕 US officials were rightly worried about infection from people and cargo carried by ships crossing the Pacific Ocean, and all such ships were rigorously inspected. At that time, however, it was not widely known that rats could carry plague bacteria, and that fleas on those rats could transmit the disease to humans.〔Echenberg 2007, p. 7〕 Ships arriving in US ports were declared clean after inspection of the passengers showed no signs of disease. Health officials conducted no tests on rats or fleas.〔Echenberg 2007, p. 11〕 Despite important advances in the 1890s in the fight against bubonic plague, many of the world's doctors did not immediately change their ineffective and outdated methods.〔〔Kitasato Shibasaburō first described the plague bacteria in Hong Kong in 1894. Simultaneously but independently, Alexandre Yersin described and named the plague bacterium, and proved the rat to be a major vector in plague. Masanori Ogata and Paul-Louis Simond, acting independently, proved the flea was a critical link in 1897. The same year, Waldemar Haffkine developed a vaccine to inoculate humans against the disease. These advancements were discussed in 1897 at medical conferences but many doctors continued with their previous methods of dealing with the disease.〕 In November 1898, the US Marine Hospital Service (MHS) chief surgeon, James M. Gassaway, felt obliged to refute rumors of plague in San Francisco. Supported by the city's health officer, he said that some Chinese residents had died of pneumonia or lung edema, but it was not bubonic plague. In the newly formed US Territory of Hawaii, the city of Honolulu fell victim to the plague in December 1899. Residents of Chinatown, Honolulu, were reporting cases of fever and swollen lymph glands forming bubos, with severe internal organ damage quickly leading to death. Not knowing precisely how to control the spread of the disease, health officials of the city determined to burn the houses where victims had been found. Thousands of area residents were evacuated and quarantined for four months. Infected buildings were identified and destroyed by fire. On January 20, 1900, changing winds fanned the flames out of control, and nearly all of Chinatown burned——leaving 6,000 without homes.〔Chase 2003, p. 12〕 San Francisco's harbor was only one short ocean voyage away from Honolulu, and medical men such as Joseph J. Kinyoun, the chief quarantine officer of the MHS in San Francisco, were worried about the infection coming to California. A Japanese ship, the S.S. ''Nippon Maru'', arriving in San Francisco Bay in June 1899 had two plague deaths at sea, and two more cases of stowaways found dead in the bay, with postmortem cultures proving they had the plague. In New York in November 1899, the British ship ''J.W. Taylor'' brought three cases of plague from Brazil, but the cases were confined to the ship.〔 The Japanese freighter S.S. ''Nanyo Maru'' arrived in Port Townsend, Washington, on January 30, 1900, with 3 deaths out of 17 cases of confirmed plague. All of these ships were quarantined; they are not known to have infected the general population. However, it is possible that plague escaped some unknown ship by way of fleas or rats, later to infect US residents.〔 In this atmosphere of grave danger, in January 1900 Kinyoun ordered all ships coming to San Francisco from China, Japan, Australia and Hawaii to fly yellow flags to warn of possible plague on board.〔Chase 2003, p. 18〕 Many entrepreneurs and sailing men felt that this was bad for business, and unfair to ships that were free of plague. City promoters were confident that plague could not take hold, and they were unhappy with what they saw as Kinyoun's high-handed abuse of authority. On February 4, 1900, the Sunday magazine supplement of the ''San Francisco Examiner'' carried an article titled "Why San Francisco Is Plague-Proof".〔Chase 2003, p. 223〕 Certain American experts held the mistaken belief that a rice-based diet left Asians with a lower resistance to plague, and that a diet of meat kept Caucasians free from this disease.〔Kraut 1995, (p. 85 )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「San Francisco plague of 1900–04」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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