Plague and Fire: Battling Black Death and the 1900 Burning of Honolulu's Chinatown

Abstract

James C. Mohr, Plague and Fire: Battling Black Death and the 1900 Burning of Honolulu's Chinatown , New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. 256. £18.50. ISBN 0–19–516231–5. On the night of 11 December 1899, Dr George Herbert, the director of the Oahu Insane Asylum, was called to examine a local bookkeeper called You Chong. He was displaying symptoms of the plague that was rumoured to be afflicting people in the neighbourhood and traditional Chinese medical remedies had been tried and had failed. By the time that Herbert arrived, the bookkeeper had slipped into a coma, dying in the early hours of the next morning. The doctor suspected that the young Chinese clerk had indeed died of plague and his diagnosis was confirmed with a post-mortem examination conducted at the victim's store in the presence of four physicians; the city's new official bacteriologist Dr Walter Hoffman, Dr Duncan Carmichael who represented the United States Marine Hospital Service in Hawaii, Dr Sun Chin who had cared for the victim prior to his death, and Dr Francis Day who represented the city's Board of Health. By the end of the day, four more confirmed plague deaths were reported and Honolulu was faced with a major public health crisis. The dreaded disease had likely arrived via plague-infested rats who disembarked the previous summer and, with the confirmed deaths in Chinatown, the local authorities found themselves making an unprecedented decision. After hearing reports from a number of doctors, including a pair of Chinese physicians who had received a Western-style medical education in Canton, the city's three-member Board of Health unanimously declared a state of emergency. According to Hawaii's fledgling republican constitution, this decision meant that the Board of Health was now empowered to take whatever measures were necessary to protect the public. However, at this moment in time Hawaii's constitution has been suspended in order to facilitate its annexation by the USA. To resolve the status of their decision, the members of the Board of Health quickly arranged to meet with Hawaii's Council of State. Within minutes, the members of the council not only ‘confirmed the Board of Health's emergency medical powers, but also unanimously ceded absolute control over the entire Hawaiian archipelago to the Honolulu Board of Health for the duration of the plague crisis’ (pp. 39–40). Thus, in less than a day after learning of You Chong's illness, three physicians, Nathaniel B. Emerson, Francis R. Day and Clifford B. Wood, found themselves holding absolute political power over the Hawaiian Islands.

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