Engelmann, Lukas

The case of Dr. Kinyoun and the 1900 Plague in San Francisco, in which he became a threatening foreign regime - a tragic hero in the historical drama of American public health

Edinburgh Research Explorer

     Edinburgh Research Explorer                                      Bacteriology as conspiracyCitation for published version:Engelmann, L, Bacteriology as conspiracy, 2015, Web publication/site, Open Democracy.Link:Link to publication record in Edinburgh Research ExplorerDocument Version:Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of recordPublisher Rights Statement:Creative Commons LicenseThis article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. If youhave any queries about republishing please contact us. Please check individual images for licensing details.General rightsCopyright for the publications made accessible via the Edinburgh Research Explorer is retained by the author(s)and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise andabide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.Take down policyThe University of Edinburgh has made every reasonable effort to ensure that Edinburgh Research Explorercontent complies with UK legislation. If you believe that the public display of this file breaches copyright pleasecontact openaccess@ed.ac.uk providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately andinvestigate your claim.Download date: 14. Jun. 2018Lukas EngelmannBacteriology as conspiracyopendemocracy.net/conspiracy/suspect-science/lukas-engelmann/bacteriology-as-conspiracyThe case of Dr. Kinyoun and the 1900 Plague in San Francisco, in which he became athreatening foreign regime - a tragic hero in the historical drama of American public health.A few months after bubonic plague had allegedly arrived in San Francisco and thus finallyreached the Americas for the very first time, the popular local newspaper San FranciscoCall arrived at its own diagnosis. What had plagued the city, the bay area and the minds ofthe people therein was not plague, but a disease called “Kinyounism" it announced on June22, 1900. The affliction was characterized by an autocratic federal power-ridden quarantineofficer, who based his drastic and tremendously damaging quarantine measures against asuspected threat of bubonic plague solely on the strange and sometimes ridiculousprocedures of a young, often mysterious and suspect science: bacteriology.1/7Fig 1 - The San Francisco Call, 10 March 1990. Fair use.For the Call, the Governor ofCalifornia and a good number of local clinicians, plague had never arrived, but a ‘plaguecraze’ was made up by the federal quarantine officer J. J. Kinyoun.(Fig1) He was accusedof conspiring against the State of California, the City of San Francisco, its people and theirhealth. The person who had claimed to have found, isolated and proven plague in SanFrancisco and furthermore was responsible for safeguarding the city against infectiousdiseases had been ridiculed, dragged to court and was about to face threats to his life inthe months that followed. The bacteriologist himself had become a disease, his scientificpractice a threatening foreign regime.History, of course, has turned the tables: Kinyoun did probably diagnose plague, and theconspirators were identified within the group of plague deniers, amplified by three powerfulnewspapers, the merchant’s associations of San Francisco, the Governor of the CalifornianState and some of the noble doctors from the San Francisco Clinical Association. For them,Kinyounism symbolized a regime of public health that compromised local political,economic and social interest; they preferred traditional methods of hygiene and cleanlinessto quarantine. Politically, they rejected federal interference in state business, underminingthe federal responsibility to protect the United States against epidemic diseases. Medically,2/7they questioned the means of diagnosing plague bacteriologically, merging doubts aboutthe emerging discipline with the uncertainty of what actually characterizes an outbreak ofbubonic plague in the twentieth century.The outbreak began with a suspicious case in San Francisco’s Chinatown. On March 7 in1900, Kinyoun left a detailed note in the Angel Island quarantine station’s registry book:“This morning the press announces that a suspicious case, probably bubonic plague had beenobserved in Chinatown, San Francisco, and that the whole of Chinatown had been quarantinedby the Board of Health. In the afternoon I telephoned to Dr. Kellogg, the bacteriologist for theCity Board of Health, who informed me that he had made an examination of specimens ofgland tissue from a Chinese, which showed some very suspicious forms. He asked if he couldcome over to the station with some of the tissue and make an examination here.  On his arrival,new preparations were made, which when examined showed a number of very suspiciousforms, which suggested plague. I then suggested that animal inoculations be made with asmall portion of the gland tissue. This was done, a rat, a guinea pig and a small monkey wereinoculated.”Two days later - due to the absence of new cases the quarantine was lifted - on March 9,the San Francisco Call dedicated a large caricature to the bacteriological procedures,mocking both the city authorities and the scientific measures carried out along the lines ofKoch’s postulates to prove the bacteria to be a causative agent in the disease in question.The caricature displays the before mentioned rat, Guinea pig and monkey as being happilyfed and ‘livin’ easy.’ (Fig. 2) Instead of having died to prove the presence of plague, theyhad remained alive, arguably happy and well fed. The quarantine had to be lifted, damagewas done, associations and representatives were angry, but the annoying ‘plague farce’seemed to be over. 3/7Fig 2 – The San Francisco Call 19 June 1900. Fair use.As Philip.A. Kalisch was to put it,“The journalists spoke too soon”. In a second note in Angel Island’s registry on March 12,Kinyoun wrote: “The Guinea pig died sometime during the night of the 11th, the rat at 11am, Mar 12, & the monkey was quite sick.” The monkey died a few days later. For Kinyoun,after inspecting the corpses, sufficient proof was given to accept the existence of plague inthe city. In his own words in a letter to his aunt and uncle: “It therefore became my duty,under the law, to report these facts immediately to Washington, together with any otherswhich bear upon the subject.”From here on, the city became the scenery for a dramatic battle between those agreeingon Kinyoun’s diagnosis and those questioning and denying persistently the presence ofbubonic plague in San Francisco. On the side of the federal bacteriologist, we find the city’sMajor Phelan, the city’s Board of Health led by Dr. Williamson and a number of respectabledoctors from the San Francisco Medical Society, publicly backed by just one newspaper ,the San Francisco Examiner. The other side would constitute itself through the support ofthe Californian Governor William T. Gage, the Californian Board of Health, amplifiedthrough the strong voice of three large daily newspapers and equally supported by anumber of respectable doctors from the San Francisco Clinical Society.4/7The story of this defining conflict of the US public health system has been told many times.It is usually presented as a classic case of political and economic interests trumpingscientific rigour in order to prevent a drastic short-term damage to commerce and imagewhile risking the long term effects of a dangerous epidemic. Governor Gage is oftendepicted as a leading figure in this conspiracy against science and health. Eager to protectthe sanitary image of California from national and international isolation, he tried toinfluence doctors, politicians and political institutions to follow his direction. Most of the newspapers of San Francisco acted accordingly to the enormous commercialinterests of their owners, well connected to the merchant and commerce associations,while the collaborating doctors are often portrayed as compliant experts, compromising theirmedical and scientific values to consolidate the conspiracy of plague, orchestrated andplotted by the federal bacteriologist J. J. Kinyoun.The sanitary officer would become a public target first in caricatures and public shaming,later on through a bounty on his head, needing a personal life guard throughout conductinghis investigations throughout the bay area, before the director of the Marine HospitalService, General Wyman gave in to political pressure and decided to deploy himelsewhere.Kinyoun became a tragic hero in this historical drama of American public health. He himselftitled the events enfolding in the aftermath of his plague diagnosis “Le miserable enQuarantaine”. Before he was brought down by the powerful opposition he had to face inSan Francisco, the ‘forgotten indispensible’ man had a stunning career.After finishing his studies in medicine, he began practicing medicine in 1882 in New YorkCity and developed early on an outstanding interest in the emerging field of bacteriology.He entered the Marine Hospital Service and quickly associated himself with the HygienicLaboratory, the first reference laboratory of the US. His exemplary 16 year career in theMHS corresponded with the rise and exponential growth of American microbiology.Highlights from his time as a director of the Hygienic Laboratory have been the firstisolation of the cholera bacillus on American soil, his research visits in Berlin with RobertKoch, in Paris with Emile Roux and in Japan with Kitasato Shobasuburo.This decorated career of a “real pasteurian” came to an abrupt end when in 1899 Kinyounwas suddenly sent to Angel Island in San Francisco to oversee a vigilant quarantine systemto protect the United States against plague. Kinyoun dreaded his factual demotion, the“sickening weather” of the Bay Area and complained to his friend: “I have not been wellsince I came to San Francisco. I had four break-downs in the last year”. He had alsoreceived his “first baptism of newspaper fire.”And indeed, the newspapers, mostly the Call, fired a broadside: After a series ofaccusations against the major, the city Board of Health and their officials, the focusnarrowed down on Kinyoun. In the meantime, a few more cases had appeared, andKinyoun had established a travel ban on Chinatown, which was lifted by the Court in June1900. To prevent a spread of plague to the rest of the US, Kinyoun informed other stateboards and quarantine stations of the immediate threat and was ordered by GeneralWyman to consequently widen the travel ban for everyone suspicious of having been5/7infected. This gave Kinyoun even more power:  “just as I choose, so that I could deny theright of any one whom I knew or felt has been exposed to the infection of plague.” The Callreacted furiously:“Dr. J.J. Kinyoun. Federal quarantine officer at this port, has struck a serious blow at theproperty of California. Abusing the autocratic powers of his position and without a care for theconsequences of his extravagant action, he has placed the State under quarantine. He hasparalyzed traffic, made the State an object of fear to the Union, jeopardizing every financialand industrial interest in California, and proclaimed to the world the dangerous falsehood thatthe most drastic measures are necessary to prevent the spread of the bubonic plague in thisState. As far as any investigation can prove this action of Dr. Kinyoun is utterly withoutwarrant. Every responsible investigator declares that if the bubonic plague ever was in SanFrancisco it is not here now.” (Call, 17/06/1900)In the following weeks, the tone got rough. From insinuating that Kinyoun had in fact a“buboe on his brain”, to celebrating Kinyoun’s second failure in court when the travel banwas lifted ( see Fig 2), and asking to “Oust the bubonic board” - to finally arriving at thediagnosis of “Kinyounism”.To protect the city from Kinyounism in the future the Call asked the City ”to get rid of the indisputable foulness of Chinatown,” which gave Kinyoun and the Board “ a shadow of anexcuse” to suspect plague where – as the Call repeated tirelessly – there never has beenany trace of the dreaded epidemic. The seemingly obvious problems of hygiene, thenecessity of cleaning what is perceived as ‘foulness’, resembles the racist stereotypesdirected at the Chinese populations and their segregated quarters, which were usuallyperceived as dangerous, conspicuous and obfuscated spaces.Kinyoun, on the other hand, was ready to inscribe himself into history. In his letter to hisfriend, he responded to the allegations of the Call with his own interpretation of the diseasehe has become:“Kinyounism is meant to be that a man will carry out his orders irrespective of the wish of thelocal people; that he will tell the truth whether it is politics or not; that he cannot be bribed,coerced or jollied onto supressing the truth, particularly to his superiors.”(Letter to Bailhache,49)Given the statement of the Call, the reaction of Kinyoun and the historical interpretation ofwho conspired against what, the story of commercial interest on one end and scientificrigour at the other prevails. But, as it remains to be shown, one should be careful inaccepting this narrative all too easily. What Erwin Ackerknecht has argued for the anti-contagionist throughout the nineteenth century applies here as well:“Still, to call the anticontagionists simply ‘‘mouthpieces of commercial interest’’ would be aregrettable oversimplification of the situation. To many of them, both slogans: freedom ofcommerce (no quarantines), and freedom of science (anticontagionism) were, together withothers, like freedom of the individual (against any bureaucracy), the natural expression of thesame fundamental attitude and social position.” (Ackerknecht 1948)6/7Because behind the dramatic scenes of political conspiracy and suspect science, one canindeed find a complex and often subtle medical debate, whose authors shared the samefundamental attitude, about how to arrive at a satisfying way to diagnose and define thenature of plague. Bacteriology was still a science in the making and its findings needed tobe related to clinical histories, epidemiological patterns and pathological analysis. This wasprecisely the weak spot of bubonic plague at the time. The bacteria was defined and mostlyagreed upon, but its vector and means of distribution, its ecology and epidemiology wasnot.‘Kinyounism’ might be sorted out as just a polemical way of blaming the bacteriologist forhis diagnosis. But historically, ‘Kinyounism’ could as well be understood as a symptom offailing to justify a particular public health regime based on quarantine, the laboratory andthe microscope.The research leading to these results has received funding from the European ResearchCouncil under the European Union's Seventh Framework programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC grant agreement no 336564Bibliography:Letter to Bailhache and Letter to Aunt and Uncle from the National Library of Medicine,Kinyoun Papers.Ackerknecht, Erwin H. 1948. “Anticontagionism between 1821 and 1867.” Bulletin of theHistory of Medicine 22: 562–93.Chase, Marilyn. 2004. The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco.Random House Publishing Group.Craddock, Susan. 2000. City of Plagues: Disease, Poverty, and Deviance in SanFrancisco. Minneapolis ; London: University of Minnesota Press.Feldinger, Frank. 2008. A Slight Epidemic. Silver Lake Publishing.Kalisch, Philip A. 1972. “The Black Death in Chinatown: Plague and Politics in SanFrancisco 1900-1904.” Arizona and the West 14 (2): 113–36.Morens, David M, and National Library of Medicine (U.S.). 2011. The ForgottenIndispensible Man Joe Kinyoun & the Birth of NIH. [Bethesda, Md.]: National Library ofMedicine.Risse, Guenter B. 2012. Plague, Fear, and Politics in San Francisco’s Chinatown. JHUPress.Shah, Nayan. 2001. Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’sChinatown. University of California Press.7/7

Bacteriology as conspiracy

https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/files/60034178/Engelmann_OpenDemocracy.net_Bacteriology_as_conspiracy.pdf

Bacteriology as conspiracy

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Edinburgh Research Explorer