Black Death at the Golden Gate

Black Death at the Golden Gate by David Randal. This tells the medical history of the plague in the US. The first outbreak came in the early 1900s in the San Francisco area. This also tells the story of the National Hospital Service, which would later be the National Institutes of Health. In particular Rupert Blue who's ground breaking work helped to contain the plague and keep if from becoming a national catastrophe. Of course woven throughout the story are the politics that were involved. City and State officials in California not wanting to have the state economy affected by a reputation of being a plague state, while at the same time trying to stop an epidemic from taking hold. The pathology of the plague is interesting in that the american version proved slightly different than the epidemics that hit asia before it came to the US.