The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1901-04-12
SAYS THERE WAS NO PLAGUE.

We are sorry that DR.. Alvarez should
have risked his professional reputation
| on the statement that the epidemic
which killed so many people here in the
winter and spring of 1900 was not the
bubonic plague. The statement simply
raises doubts about the professional
experience of the Doctor which are in
creased by the admission that MS
knowledge OF bacteriology was gained
only in a six months course at johns
Hopkins University. That is not
qualifying experience to refer to when
taking issue with the whole medical
fraternity of Honolulu, many members
of which have spent years in the col
legiate study of bacteriology, and have
afterwards spent months in the Asia
tic purlieus of the plague.
Every scientific man of repute who
examined the cultures made during the
endemic of last year, Territorial, Fed
eral and foreign, agreed that they rep
resented cases of actual, bubonic
plague. The syvr.ons of the patients
were those accredited to plague N the
standard medical works. Certainty
about the disease had to be reached be-
fore the United States quarantine was
established; and IL was so reached by
the Federal Quarantine officer himself
The usual history of plague visitations
occurred here; first, mortality among
rats and a stampede from the Wharves
and from Chinatown of most of the
survivors; second rapid mortality
among Asiatics living in such places as
produce or nourish the bubonic plague.
the cases being clearly bubonic as
shown by study of cultures; third
gradual but certain disappearance of
the disease after the town had been
subjected to the remedial and proven
tive measures taken against plague
abroad.
DR.. Alvarez argues that as there was
no evidence Of the terrible contagious
ness of the typical bubonic plague
here, the epidemic of 1900 must have
been something else. He might, by the
same token, declare that the last two
smallpox visitations and the cholera
outbreak were also imaginary. The
reason why Honolulu people did not die
like flies from plague is the same rea-
son why other people do not oie like
flies from plague in San Francisco and
Sydney and Glasgow and Yokohama
and Singapore-namely that sanitary
science has found weapons, unknown in
medieval times, with which to combat
the maladies born of filth. Had con-
ditions been the same in Honolulu last
year as they were in Florence during
the fifteenth century, neither DR..
Alvarez nor any other resident might
have been left to tell the tale or to dis
pute the previous conclusions of the
psychologists. But happily Honolulu,
with one of the most capable Boards of
Health ever organized here. and with
the concurrent aid of good citizens, kept
down the ravages of contagion and
after nearly four months fight,
stamped them out altogether.
DIR. Alvarez statements would be read
with establishment abroad where, in
great laboratoriesy-our- plague cultures
have been studied and been passed up
on as being precisely what they were
shown to be here.
We have no desire to account on per-
sonal grounds for DR.. Alvarez's sudden
attack upon the Board of Health, at a
time coincident with the appearance of
a bill to reorganize that body: but 1t
will be DR.. Alvarez own fault If the
medical men whose professional ca
pacity he indicts do not retaliate by
showing the existence of a strong in
dividual grievance due in small part
to the insistence of the Board that the
Doctor should keep his own premises
reasonably clean.