James C. Mohr

In December 1899, an outbreak of bubonic plague in Hawaii caused widespread panic, a panic which in January 1900 lead to the destruction of a large swathe of Honolulu in an out of control fire. James Mohr's recounting of these events is thorough, if curiously uninterested in why all of this matters in the bigger historical/epidemiological picture, or in truly digging into the perspectives of anyone other than the three white male coloniser physicians who were appointed to bring the epidemic show more under control. The fact that Mohr never explicitly grapples with the question of whether the plague outbreak did end because of the burning of Chinatown, let alone the broader contexts of American colonial imperialism, limit Plague and Fire's impact. show less

Shortly after the Annexation of the Kingdom of Hawaii by a group of (mostly American) businessmen, bubonic plague broke out in Honolulu. President Dole and the Council of State unanimously gave the Board of Health emergency medical powers--and in fact, ceded absolute control over the entire Hawaiian archipelago to the Honolulu Board of Health for the duration of the plague crisis. Thus, three white American physicians were given absolute dictatorial authority over all off Hawaii. To my show more surprise, Dr. Nathanial Emerson, Dr. Francis Day, and Dr. Clifford Wood did an excellent job during the four months of their absolute rule. They knew that plague was caused by bacteria (Yersin&Kitasato had identified it six years earlier), but not how the bacteria spread. Thus, they were reduced to doing what they could: twice-daily health inspections of all citizens, careful quarantines, disinfectant, fumigation, and controlled burning of buildings where people had caught plague, wide-spread immunization against plague. The islands were populated by Chinese, Japanese, American, European and native Hawaiian peoples, but racial tensions (though absolutely present) were kept to a minimum throughout the crisis. As of April 1900, plague cases were no longer reported in the Hawaiian islands. show less

A social history of a controversy - a social history more than a century removed from us today in 2012