{"id":1268,"date":"2019-03-27T04:03:24","date_gmt":"2019-03-27T04:03:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sportsnewsforyou.com\/?p=1268"},"modified":"2019-03-27T04:03:24","modified_gmt":"2019-03-27T04:03:24","slug":"bacteriology-as-conspiracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/?p=1268","title":{"rendered":"Bacteriology as conspiracy"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

A few months after bubonic plague
\nhad allegedly<\/em> arrived in San
\nFrancisco and thus finally reached the Americas for the very first time, the popular
\nlocal newspaper San Francisco Call<\/em>
\narrived at its own diagnosis. What had plagued the city, the bay area and the
\nminds of the people therein was not plague, but a disease called \u201cKinyounism" it
\nannounced on June 22, 1900. The affliction was characterized by an autocratic
\nfederal power-ridden quarantine officer, who based his drastic and tremendously
\ndamaging quarantine measures against a suspected threat of bubonic plague
\nsolely on the strange and sometimes ridiculous procedures of a young, often
\nmysterious and suspect science: bacteriology. <\/p>\n

Fig 1 – The San Francisco Call, 10 March 1990. Fair use.For the Call, the Governor of California and a good number of local
\nclinicians, plague had never arrived, but a \u2018plague craze\u2019 was made up by the
\nfederal quarantine officer J. J. Kinyoun.(Fig1) He was accused of conspiring
\nagainst the State of California, the City of San Francisco, its people and
\ntheir health. The person who had claimed to have found, isolated and proven
\nplague in San Francisco and furthermore was responsible for safeguarding the
\ncity against infectious diseases had been ridiculed, dragged to court and was
\nabout to face threats to his life in the months that followed. The
\nbacteriologist himself had become a disease, his scientific practice a threatening
\nforeign regime.<\/i><\/p>\n

History, of course, has turned
\nthe tables: Kinyoun did probably diagnose plague, and the conspirators were identified
\nwithin the group of plague deniers, amplified by three powerful newspapers, the
\nmerchant\u2019s associations of San Francisco, the Governor of the Californian State
\nand some of the noble doctors from the San Francisco Clinical Association. For
\nthem, Kinyounism<\/em> symbolized a regime
\nof public health that compromised local political, economic and social
\ninterest; they preferred traditional methods of hygiene and cleanliness to
\nquarantine. Politically, they rejected federal interference in state business,
\nundermining the federal responsibility to protect the United States against
\nepidemic diseases. Medically, they questioned the means of diagnosing plague
\nbacteriologically, merging doubts about the emerging discipline with the
\nuncertainty of what actually characterizes an outbreak of bubonic plague in the
\ntwentieth century. <\/p>\n

The
\noutbreak began with a suspicious case in San Francisco\u2019s Chinatown. On March 7 in
\n1900, Kinyoun left a detailed note in the Angel Island quarantine station\u2019s
\nregistry book:<\/p>\n

\u201cThis morning the press announces that a
\nsuspicious case, probably bubonic plague had been observed in Chinatown, San
\nFrancisco, and that the whole of Chinatown had been quarantined by the Board of
\nHealth. In the afternoon I telephoned to Dr. Kellogg, the bacteriologist for
\nthe City Board of Health, who informed me that he had made an examination of
\nspecimens of gland tissue from a Chinese, which showed some very suspicious
\nforms. He asked if he could come over to the station with some of the tissue
\nand make an examination here. \u00a0On his
\narrival, new preparations were made, which when examined showed a number of
\nvery suspicious forms, which suggested plague. I then suggested that animal
\ninoculations be made with a small portion of the gland tissue. This was done, a
\nrat, a guinea pig and a small monkey were inoculated.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

Two
\ndays later – due to the absence of new cases the quarantine was lifted – on
\nMarch 9, the San Francisco Call<\/em>
\ndedicated a large caricature to the bacteriological procedures, mocking
\nboth the city authorities and the scientific measures carried out along the
\nlines of Koch\u2019s postulates to prove the bacteria to be a causative agent in the
\ndisease in question. The caricature displays the before mentioned rat, Guinea
\npig and monkey as being happily fed and \u2018livin\u2019 easy.\u2019 (Fig. 2) Instead of having
\ndied to prove the presence of plague, they had remained alive, arguably happy
\nand well fed. The quarantine had to be lifted, damage was done, associations
\nand representatives were angry, but the annoying \u2018plague farce\u2019 seemed to be
\nover.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Fig 2 \u2013 The San Francisco Call 19 June 1900. Fair use.As
\nPhilip.A. Kalisch was to put it, \u201cThe journalists spoke too soon\u201d. In a second
\nnote in Angel Island\u2019s registry on March 12, Kinyoun wrote: \u201cThe Guinea pig
\ndied sometime during the night of the 11th, the rat at 11 am, Mar
\n12, & the monkey was quite sick.\u201d The monkey died a few days later. For
\nKinyoun, after inspecting the corpses, sufficient proof was given to accept the
\nexistence of plague in the city. In his own words in a letter to his aunt and uncle:
\n\u201cIt therefore became my duty, under the law, to report these facts immediately
\nto Washington, together with any others which bear upon the subject.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

From
\nhere on, the city became the scenery for a dramatic battle between those
\nagreeing on Kinyoun\u2019s diagnosis and those questioning and denying persistently
\nthe presence of bubonic plague in San Francisco. On the side of the federal
\nbacteriologist, we find the city\u2019s Major Phelan, the city\u2019s Board of Health led
\nby Dr. Williamson and a number of respectable doctors from the San Francisco Medical Society,<\/em> publicly
\nbacked by just one newspaper , the San
\nFrancisco Examiner<\/em>. The other side would constitute itself through the
\nsupport of the Californian Governor William T. Gage, the Californian Board of
\nHealth, amplified through the strong voice of three large daily newspapers and
\nequally supported by a number of respectable doctors from the San Francisco Clinical Society.<\/em><\/p>\n

The
\nstory of this defining conflict of the US public health system has been told
\nmany times. It is usually presented as a classic case of political and economic
\ninterests trumping scientific rigour in order to prevent a drastic short-term
\ndamage to commerce and image while risking the long term effects of a dangerous
\nepidemic. Governor Gage is often depicted as a leading figure in this
\nconspiracy against science and health. Eager to protect the sanitary image of
\nCalifornia from national and international isolation, he tried to influence
\ndoctors, politicians and political institutions to follow his direction.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Most of
\nthe newspapers of San Francisco acted accordingly to the enormous commercial
\ninterests of their owners, well connected to the merchant and commerce
\nassociations, while the collaborating doctors are often portrayed as compliant
\nexperts, compromising their medical and scientific values to consolidate the
\nconspiracy of plague, orchestrated and plotted by the federal bacteriologist J.
\nJ. Kinyoun. <\/p>\n

The
\nsanitary officer would become a public target first in caricatures and public shaming,
\nlater on through a bounty on his head, needing a personal life guard throughout
\nconducting his investigations throughout the bay area, before the director of
\nthe Marine Hospital Service, General Wyman gave in to political pressure and decided
\nto deploy him elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Kinyoun
\nbecame a tragic hero in this historical drama of American public health. He himself
\ntitled the events enfolding in the aftermath of his plague diagnosis \u201cLe
\nmiserable en Quarantaine\u201d. Before he was brought down by the powerful
\nopposition he had to face in San Francisco, the \u2018forgotten
\nindispensible\u2019 man had a stunning career.<\/p>\n

After
\nfinishing his studies in medicine, he began practicing medicine in 1882 in New
\nYork City and developed early on an outstanding interest in the emerging field
\nof bacteriology. He entered the Marine Hospital Service and quickly associated
\nhimself with the Hygienic Laboratory, the first reference laboratory of the US.
\nHis exemplary 16 year career in the MHS corresponded with the rise and
\nexponential growth of American microbiology. Highlights from his time as a
\ndirector of the Hygienic Laboratory have been the first isolation of the
\ncholera bacillus on American soil, his research visits in Berlin with Robert Koch,
\nin Paris with Emile Roux and in Japan with Kitasato Shobasuburo. <\/p>\n

This decorated career of a \u201creal
\npasteurian\u201d came to an abrupt end when in 1899 Kinyoun was suddenly sent to
\nAngel Island in San Francisco to oversee a vigilant quarantine system to
\nprotect the United States against plague. Kinyoun dreaded his factual demotion,
\nthe \u201csickening weather\u201d of the Bay Area and complained to his friend: \u201cI have
\nnot been well since I came to San Francisco. I had four break-downs in the last
\nyear\u201d. He had also received his \u201cfirst baptism of newspaper fire.\u201d<\/p>\n

And
\nindeed, the newspapers, mostly the Call,<\/em>
\nfired a broadside: After a series of accusations against the major, the city
\nBoard of Health and their officials, the focus narrowed down on Kinyoun. In the
\nmeantime, a few more cases had appeared, and Kinyoun had established a travel
\nban on Chinatown, which was lifted by the Court in June 1900. To prevent a
\nspread of plague to the rest of the US, Kinyoun informed other state boards and
\nquarantine stations of the immediate threat and was ordered by General Wyman to
\nconsequently widen the travel ban for everyone suspicious of having been infected.
\nThis gave Kinyoun even more power:\u00a0 \u201cjust
\nas I choose, so that I could deny the right of any one whom I knew or felt has
\nbeen exposed to the infection of plague.\u201d The Call<\/em> reacted furiously:<\/p>\n

\u201cDr. J.J. Kinyoun. Federal quarantine
\nofficer at this port, has struck a serious blow at the property of California.
\nAbusing the autocratic powers of his position and without a care for the consequences
\nof his extravagant action, he has placed the State under quarantine. He has
\nparalyzed traffic, made the State an object of fear to the Union, jeopardizing
\nevery financial and industrial interest in California, and proclaimed to the
\nworld the dangerous falsehood that the most drastic measures are necessary to
\nprevent the spread of the bubonic plague in this State. As far as any
\ninvestigation can prove this action of Dr. Kinyoun is utterly without warrant.
\nEvery responsible investigator declares that if the bubonic plague ever was in
\nSan Francisco it is not here now.\u201d (Call, 17\/06\/1900)<\/i><\/p>\n

In the
\nfollowing weeks, the tone got rough. From insinuating that Kinyoun had in fact
\na \u201cbuboe on his brain\u201d, to celebrating Kinyoun\u2019s second failure in court when
\nthe travel ban was lifted ( see Fig 2), and asking to \u201cOust the bubonic board\u201d
\n– to finally arriving at the diagnosis of \u201cKinyounism\u201d. <\/p>\n

To
\nprotect the city from Kinyounism in the future the Call<\/em> asked the City \u201dto get rid of the\u00a0 indisputable foulness of Chinatown,\u201d which
\ngave Kinyoun and the Board \u201c a shadow of an excuse\u201d to suspect plague where \u2013
\nas the Call<\/em> repeated tirelessly \u2013 there
\nnever has been any trace of the dreaded epidemic. The seemingly obvious
\nproblems of hygiene, the necessity of cleaning what is perceived as \u2018foulness\u2019,
\nresembles the racist
\nstereotypes directed at the Chinese populations and their segregated
\nquarters, which were usually perceived as dangerous, conspicuous and obfuscated
\nspaces. <\/p>\n

Kinyoun,
\non the other hand, was ready to inscribe himself into history. In his letter to
\nhis friend, he responded to the allegations of the Call<\/em> with his own interpretation of the disease he has become:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cKinyounism is meant to be that a man will carry
\nout his orders irrespective of the wish of the local people; that he will tell
\nthe truth whether it is politics or not; that he cannot be bribed, coerced or
\njollied onto supressing the truth, particularly to his superiors.\u201d(Letter to
\nBailhache, 49)<\/i><\/p>\n

Given
\nthe statement of the Call<\/em>, the reaction
\nof Kinyoun and the historical interpretation of who conspired against what, the
\nstory of commercial interest on one end and scientific rigour at the other
\nprevails. But, as it remains to be shown, one should be careful in accepting
\nthis narrative all too easily. What Erwin Ackerknecht has argued for the anti-contagionist
\nthroughout the nineteenth century applies here as well:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cStill, to call the anticontagionists simply
\n\u2018\u2018mouthpieces of commercial interest\u2019\u2019 would be a regrettable
\noversimplification of the situation. To many of them, both slogans: freedom of
\ncommerce (no quarantines), and freedom of science (anticontagionism) were,
\ntogether with others, like freedom of the individual (against any bureaucracy),
\nthe natural expression of the same fundamental attitude and social position.\u201d (Ackerknecht 1948)<\/i><\/p>\n

Because
\nbehind the dramatic scenes of political conspiracy and suspect science, one can
\nindeed find a complex and often subtle medical debate, whose authors shared the
\nsame fundamental attitude, about how to arrive at a satisfying way to diagnose and define
\nthe nature of plague. Bacteriology was still a science in the making and its
\nfindings needed to be related to clinical histories, epidemiological patterns
\nand pathological analysis. This was precisely the weak spot of bubonic plague
\nat the time. The bacteria was defined and mostly agreed upon, but its
\nvector and means of distribution, its ecology and epidemiology was not. <\/p>\n

\u2018Kinyounism\u2019
\nmight be sorted out as just a polemical way of blaming the bacteriologist for
\nhis diagnosis. But historically, \u2018Kinyounism\u2019 could as well be understood as a
\nsymptom of failing to justify a particular public health regime based on
\nquarantine, the laboratory and the microscope. <\/p>\n

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework programme (FP7\/2007-2013) \/ERC grant agreement no 336564<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bibliography:<\/p>\n

Letter
\nto Bailhache and Letter to Aunt and Uncle from the National Library of
\nMedicine, Kinyoun Papers.<\/p>\n

Ackerknecht,
\nErwin H. 1948. \u201cAnticontagionism between 1821 and 1867.\u201d Bulletin of the
\nHistory of Medicine<\/em> 22: 562\u201393.<\/p>\n

Chase,
\nMarilyn. 2004. The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San
\nFrancisco<\/em>. Random House Publishing Group.<\/p>\n

Craddock,
\nSusan. 2000. City of Plagues: Disease, Poverty, and Deviance in San
\nFrancisco<\/em>. Minneapolis\u202f; London: University of Minnesota Press.<\/p>\n

Feldinger,
\nFrank. 2008. A Slight Epidemic<\/em>. Silver Lake Publishing.<\/p>\n

Kalisch,
\nPhilip A. 1972. \u201cThe Black Death in Chinatown: Plague and Politics in San
\nFrancisco 1900-1904.\u201d Arizona and the West<\/em> 14 (2): 113\u201336.<\/p>\n

Morens,
\nDavid M, and National Library of Medicine (U.S.). 2011. The Forgotten
\nIndispensible Man Joe Kinyoun & the Birth of NIH<\/em>. [Bethesda, Md.]:
\nNational Library of Medicine.<\/p>\n

Risse,
\nGuenter B. 2012. Plague, Fear, and Politics in San Francisco\u2019s Chinatown<\/em>.
\nJHU Press.<\/p>\n

Shah,
\nNayan. 2001. Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco\u2019s
\nChinatown<\/em>. University of California Press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few months after bubonic plague had allegedly arrived in San Francisco and thus finally reached the Americas for the very first time, the popular local newspaper San Francisco Call arrived at its own diagnosis. What had plagued the city, the bay area and the minds of the people therein was not plague, but a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}