On This Day in 1900, the Bubonic Plague Hit the Continental United States, Spiraling Into an Epidemic That Killed 119 People

On February 7, 1900, Chinese American lumberyard owner Wong Chut King fell ill. When he died a few weeks later, in March, an autopsy report confirmed public health officials’ worst fears: His death was due to the bubonic plague.

The first recorded cases of the disease date back to the sixth century C.E. during the reign of Byzantine emperor Justinian I. But the first recorded cases in the continental United States didn’t pop up until over a thousand years later.

Bubonic plague is one of three types of plague infections, all stemming from the Yersinia pestis bacterium. Ticks and fleas carrying the disease spread it to humans via bites, and humans can also contract the plague from infected animals like rats, rabbits and cats. Symptoms include fevers, headaches, chills and weakness, and they can appear in as little as two days after a bite from an infected insect or mammal. Accounts of Wong’s illness suggest he had a particularly brutal case.

The world was no stranger to plague outbreaks: The most famous, known as the Black Death, killed as many as 50 million people in Europe beginning in 1346. Scientists believe infected fleas were the vector. Since the 14th century, the bubonic plague has continued to crop up around the world. In the 1850s, an outbreak emerged in eastern Asia, blossoming into a pandemic. Cases ticked up through the 1890s, and the disease spread to China’s Canton province, then to Hong Kong.

The Dark and Deadly History of the Plague

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This particular pathway, along with booming trade between the United States and China, eventually paved the way for cases in the continental U.S.

From Hong Kong, a major shipping port, the bubonic plague traveled to other global port cities. In 1899, a public health emergency was declared in Hawaii after the first cases of the plague were detected in Honolulu. Just a few months later, the San Franciscan lumberyard owner Wong died of the first confirmed case of the plague in the continental U.S.

In the months and years that followed, at least 119 people died in the United States, with some accounts placing the death toll as high as 172. Infected rats likely brought the disease from steamships to the shore.

If local government officials had gotten their way, this U.S. epidemic may not have made it into history books. When physician Joseph J. Kinyoun used microscopic bacteria to identify the plague during Wong’s autopsy, officials and the public largely rejected his results. California’s governor, Henry Tifft Gage, accused the public health pioneer of being a “plague fake,” and newspapers ran wild with disparaging coverage of Kinyoun and his methodology. He was even accused of planting plague on cadavers throughout San Francisco.

The furor was partly due to skepticism over the relatively new field of medical bacteriology. But economic concerns and racist beliefs that the plague would only affect San Francisco’s Asian population in its Chinatown district also fueled efforts to cover up the outbreak.

However, public health proponents prevailed. Kinyoun is credited with founding the predecessor to the National Institutes of Health, and during his lifetime, he devoted himself to the prevention of infectious disease. The nation’s first plague epidemic ended in 1904 after California’s new governor, George Pardee, implemented public health measures that eventually quashed the outbreak. Today, the U.S. averages seven confirmed cases of the plague each year, with almost all cases occurring in the West.

Sarah Holzmann | READ MORE

Sarah Holzmann is a freelance writer from the Arlington, Virginia, area.