Template:Bubonic Plage in San Fransisco, 1900/doc

Background
On the Plague

On Racial Attitudes Towards the Chinese Immigrants

In the summer of 1876, there was an extremely sudden and severe outbreak of smallpox. By October, the epidemic had infected over 1600 citizens and claimed nearly 450 lives. Dr. John Meares, the newly appointed city health officer "blamed the spread and severity of the epidemic on the presence of 30,000 'unscrupulous, lying, and treacherous Chinamen' living in the heart of the city and their 'willful and diabolical disregard of our sanitary laws." Meares and his colleagues even referred to Chinatown as "the material manifestation of the alien within the modern American city."[2]