Black Death at the Golden Gate: The Race to Save America from the Bubonic Plague

Written by David K. Randall

Narrated by Charles Constant

A spine-chilling saga of virulent racism, human folly, and the ultimate triumph of scientific progress.

For Chinese immigrant Wong Chut King, surviving in San Francisco meant a life in the shadows. His passing on March 6, 1900, would have been unremarkable if a city health officer hadn't noticed a swollen black lymph node on his groin-a sign of bubonic plague. Empowered by racist pseudoscience, officials rushed to quarantine Chinatown while doctors examined Wong's tissue for telltale bacteria. If the devastating disease was not contained, San Francisco would become the American epicenter of an outbreak that had already claimed ten million lives worldwide.

To local press, railroad barons, and elected officials, such a possibility was inconceivable-or inconvenient. As they mounted a cover-up to obscure the threat, it fell to federal health officer Rupert Blue to save a city that refused to be rescued.

In the tradition of Erik Larson and Steven Johnson, bestselling author David K. Randall spins a spellbinding account of Blue's race to understand the disease and contain its spread-the only hope of saving San Francisco, and the nation, from a gruesome fate.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Highbridge Company
• Release date: May 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9781684419982

Reviews for Black Death at the Golden Gate

[shrike58 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I mostly enjoyed this accounting of the arrival the Bubonic Plague in America, and though it came out before the rise of COVID, it shows that some things don't change; the wishful thinking of the American business community, the inclination to blame a medical issue on an unpopular ethnic or social group, the easy descent into politically motivated thuggery, etc. Maybe the one point that I really have an issue with is the subtitle, as the effort to make sure the disease did not become a problem was never a "race;" it was mostly a long-haul exercise in comprehending the issue. Fortunately, the natural history of North America contributed to keeping the Plague in check enough to allow effective measures to be taken.

[quinton.baran · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is an excellent historical book of the story of plague in America, focusing primarily on San Francisco, with some details in New Orleans and Los Angeles. It is also primarily the story of two men: Joseph Kinyoun, and Rupert Blue, who fought against the plague.

The book illustrates all the frustrations of dealing with a complex problem: politics, local and national prejudice, biology, growing knowledge, experimentation, and jealousy. The two men are portrayed as protagonists, and they are described with their flaws, as well as their strengths.

This book has many parallels to the current situation in the United States and the World (I am writing this July 2020). That is one of the reasons that I sought out this book to read.

Highly entertaining and informative.

[setnahkt · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Federal health officials are alarmed by a dangerous disease outbreak, but politicians thwart them at every turn, insisting that the “disease” is a hoax designed to increase Federal control. The media supports this view, calling Federal doctors charlatans – or worse – and predicting economic disaster. When actual disease cases are acknowledged, they’re blamed on the Chinese – but attempts t limit Chinese movement are met with cries of “Racism!” and court injunctions. Not the US in 2020; San Francisco in 1900, and the disease isn’t COVID-19 but the plague – the Black Death. Author David Randall is a journalist, and this is a journalistic history, with focus on individuals rather than epidemiology and bacteriology. Nevertheless the individuals are interesting and there’s enough well-explained science. The personalities are:Joseph Kinyoun, a brilliant bacteriologist with the Marine Hospital Service (predecessor to the Public Health Service). Alas, Kinyoun didn’t have the public relations and political skills necessary for the job. When plague was discovered in Chinatown, he alienated just about everybody – the mayor of San Francisco, the Governor of California, and the Five Companies, de facto rulers of Chinatown. The Chinese took to hiding plague victims and allowing bodies to decompose before disclosing them, so there could be no autopsies; the newspapers crowed that no cases of plague existed because no unequivocal plague victims could be identified.Rupert Blue, Kinyoun’s successor (after Kinyoun was transferred due to political pressure). Blue had been a mediocre medical student, but had more tact than Kinyoun; he set up an office in Chinatown and hired a Chinese interpreter. By now it was pretty clear that the disease really was the plague, and while it was mostly confined to Chinatown some cases had occurred outside the area and among whites. Blue and his assistants were puzzled by the disease’s behavior; plague outbreaks in India and China had spread like wildfire while the San Francisco cases were erratic – a few deaths, then nothing for a week or so, then a few more, and so on. Blue hit on the idea that the disease could be spread by fleas carried by rats (this had been demonstrated by a French physician earlier but hadn’t made it to the medical community at large) and undertook a massive rat eradication and general sanitation campaign. This managed to slow and eventually stagnate the disease. Unfortunately reservoirs remained and the plague took off again after the 1906 earthquake; when that outbreak was controlled it was discovered that the disease had spread to the wild rodent population outside the city.The wild reservoir led to an outbreak in Los Angeles in 1924. This was the extremely deadly pneumonic form; it killed a Hispanic laborer, his daughter, his pregnant wife, the next-door neighbor, his wife, his four children, the ambulance driver who took the wife to the hospital, and the priest who gave last rites – often within hours of developing symptoms. Fortunately, it stopped there; the affected houses – which turned out to have rat infestations - were demolished and the debris burned.That was the last major plague outbreak in the US. It’s still enzootic among western rodents, and there’s a human case – usually nonfatal due to antibiotics – every few years or so. Public health officials still worry about what might happen if the pneumonic form breaks out in a large city, or if the bacillus becomes antibiotic resistant. The puzzle as to why the US outbreaks were not as severe as the Asian ones turned out to be due to different flea species; the disease causes blood to clot in a flea’s digestive tract. The primary flea vector in Asia has a ridge in its digestive tract that causes clots to block it, and the plague is spread when the frustrated and hungry flea regurgitates a little of its bacteria-laden last blood meal into its current victim. North American fleas are less likely to suffer a blocked digestive tract and therefore less likely to deposit a large bacterial load in a victim.Well written, and an easy read. The focus on personalities is justified, I think, because it illustrates the political savvy necessary to navigate through a public health crisis – scientific acumen alone, like Kinyoun’s, wasn’t enough. There are appropriate illustrations, footnotes, and a bibliography with a mix of popular and technical works. I would have liked some maps of San Francisco showing the case locations, but I always want more maps.

[forsanolim · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I've been pretty pointedly avoiding disease-related books for obvious reasons this year, but I happened to find this one and thought it sounded really interesting. And it was! It's the story of a bubonic plague outbreak in San Francisco at the turn of the twentieth century and the multi-year saga of trying to end the epidemic. Especially in light of this year's events, it was really interesting to see the public and governmental response to the outbreak. The book is spectacularly written and researched and really engaging--I definitely found it to be the kind of book that pulls you in and is actually fairly quick to read.