Contagion by Mark Harrison

Author:Mark Harrison
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780300123579
Publisher: Yale University Press

After the international sanitary conference at Mukden, these defects became common knowledge and created alarm in many countries that had regular dealings with China. Nowhere was this more evident than in the USA, whose Pacific territories received many migrants from China as well as many merchant vessels. The gradual liberalization of regulations in American-controlled harbours was tenable only if plague in Chinese and other foreign ports could be more effectively monitored. Representatives of the US Public Health Service were therefore stationed at most of the ports which had regular contact with American territory.149 These officials were in a position to check local arrangements and, if necessary, to assist in sanitary procedures such as fumigation to prevent rat infestation.150 In Latin America, the US sanitary presence was already well established but in East Asia arrangements were ad hoc and often ineffective. In 1922 the US government dispatched Dr Victor Heiser of the Public Health Service to China and Japan in an effort to find out what, if anything, was being done to prevent plague from spreading. From 1905 to 1915, Heiser had been Director of Health in the Philippines and he was acutely aware that trade and labour migration from China posed a constant threat to the islands. Plague had entered the Philippines in 1899 from Hong Kong and persisted at a low level until it finally disappeared in 1906.151 The prospect of re-infection, however, remained great.

The threat came from two principal sources. By far the greater danger came from China, now widely regarded as the ‘cradle’ of plague. The less obvious threat was posed by trade with Japan, which had been opened up to American commerce since the mission of Commodore Perry in 1853. With its large seaboard, overseas colonies and extensive trading links, Japan was extremely vulnerable to infection. Although the number of plague cases reported there had declined dramatically since the peak of 645 in 1907, they continued to appear sporadically in the major ports, causing foreign powers to remain cautious.152 Japan had its own quarantine legislation which was very stringent by the standards of the time but sanitary precautions for vessels leaving Japanese ports for American territory were generally arranged by the US Consulate and paid for by local shipping interests, much as they were in China. In 1922, for example, Heiser inspected arrangements in Yokohama, Nagasaki, Shanghai and Hong Kong. In general, it seems that regulations were complied with, but in some ports tensions with shipping lines were evident. At Yokohama, Heiser noted that: ‘Hides and similar articles requiring disinfection under the United States quarantine regulations are supposed to be disinfected in accordance therewith. There is much reason to believe, however, that the disinfection is lax.’153 At Shanghai the American consulate was ‘literally besieged on all sides with complaints dealing with the manner in which the quarantine inspection is being conducted’. Ships' captains protested against the ‘absurdity of the attempt to require them to fend their vessels six feet off the pontoon wharf which is located in the river in front of Shanghai’.

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