Table of Contents

AcknowledgmentsPreface Illustrations Part 1: Belle Epoque and Bubonic PlaguePart 2: Asian Beginnings 1 An Unexampled Calamity: Hong Kong, 1894 2 City of the Plague: Bombay, 1896 Part 3: Plague at the Doors of Europe 3 The Plague Has at Last Arrived: Alexandria, 1899 4 They Have a Love of Clean Underlinen and of Fresh Air: Porto, 1899 Part 4: South American Settings5 A Bubonic Plague Epidemic Does Not Exist in This Country: Buenos Aires, 1900 6 The Victory of Hygiene, Good Taste, and Art: Rio de Janeiro, 1900 Part 5: Plague under the Stars and Stripes 7 Plague in Paradise: Honolulu, 1899/1900 8 Black Plague Creeps into America: San Francisco, 1900/1901 Part 6: Plague under the Union Jack 9 The Inhabitants of Sydney No More Go Barefoot Than Do the Inhabitants of London: Sydney, 1900 10 It Is a Miracle We Are Not Visited by a Black Plague: Cape Town, 1901 Part 7: Plague's Lessons AppendixNotes Index About the Author

About the Author

Myron Echenberg is professor of history at McGill University. He is the author of Black Death, White Medicine: Bubonic Plague and the Politics of Public Health in Colonial Senegal, 1914-1945 and Colonial Conscripts: The Tirailleurs Sénégalais in French West Africa, 1857-1960.

Reviews

"Provides an in-depth look at the ineffectiveness of certain public health disease control measures such as quarantine, isolation of patient contacts, and the importance of using knowledge of the pathogen's disease ecology for the development and implementation of effective control measures." --International Journal of African Historical Studies"Echenberg's richly textured and deeply discerning account of the last plague pandemic is, as he points out, a cautionary tale of the politics of disease control in a globalized world. It should become compulsory reading for all who are engaged in the construction of the new discipline of global public health." --New England Journal of Medicine"Echenberg's richly textured and deeply discerning account of the last plague pandemic is, as he points out, a cautionary tale of the politics of disease control in a globalized world. It should become compulsory reading for all who are engaged in the construction of the new discipline of global public health." --Dorothy Porter in The New England Journal of Medicine"Well written and fluent in narrating its stories, this work can provide good reading not only for historians and students specializing in medicine, but for a wider public as well."--Journal of World History"[Echenberg] does an excellent job of presenting complex political and social consequences of the plague." --Choice, Recommended"An extensive comparative study." --Science News"In an era when global issues have come to dominate public health discourse, Echenberg depicts the bubonic plague epidemic that struck six continents in the decades around 1900. With sophistication and sensitivity, he parses the multiple medical cultures, political systems, and varieties of popular response that met the plague. Few historians would take on such a daunting task: of chronicling an epidemic in ten cities, working with sources in more than a dozen languages, and comprehending multiple systems of medical thought. Echenberg pulls it off. Plague Ports is a masterwork of global health history. "--Margaret Humphreys, Duke University"A significant contribution to the history of the modern pandemic." --Carol Benedict, Georgetown University"The 1800s were, from Jenner to Pasteur to Koch, the years in which more progress was made in controlling infectious disease than in the previous 10,000, yet at the end of that century Plague swept round the world and killed multitudes as if to admonish us for our arrogance. Most of us today, even students of medical history, have avoided paying heed to that admonishment. Myron Echenberg's excellent scholarship and scientific sophistication oblige us, as we cower under the threat of avian flu, to pay the Third Bubonic Plague pandemic the attention it deserves." --Alfred Crosby, University of Texas and author of Children of the Sun: A History of Humanity's Unappeasable Appetite for Energy