Black Death at the Golden Gate : The Race to Save America from the Bubonic Plague (9780393609462) by Randall David K

Author:Randall, David K.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Epub3
Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc

CHAPTER 11

AS SOON AS POSSIBLE

A short article in the San Francisco Chronicle in April of 1902 made Rupert Blue’s pain public. Its headline alone, “Dr. Blue’s Wife Secures Divorce,” was enough to cause a minor scandal in his hometown of Marion, where the voluntary termination of a marriage was still rare. In her complaint, Juliette said that Rupert had failed to materially provide for her, adding another layer to his humiliation. Rupert had not seen Juliette since he left her family home in Washington, and soon learned that she was preparing to sail to Europe for the summer, no doubt intending to immerse herself in high society and the possibility of romance after the drudgery of life with him in the Marine Hospital Service. Rupert, now officially alone, remained in Milwaukee, where he braved a future that he had never imagined.

His entire life, he had measured himself by the example set by his older brother, Victor, and never before had he found himself falling so far behind. Victor was a war hero and married with two young children, all but completing the circle of expectations set out by the social codes of the South. Rupert was none of that, and now his shortcomings were laid bare for all to see. He retreated into his work, grasping on to the one link that remained between his vision of what his life would be and how it was actually turning out. On his better days, he forced himself to accept invitations to dances and cocktail parties thrown by members of Milwaukee’s upper crust, if for no other reason than to keep his social skills from atrophying from disuse. On other days, he spent more and more time in the boxing ring, hoping his fists could do what his brain had not and pummel his problems away. As he stood in the ring with his gloves on, delivering and receiving blows, he felt as if his body was exorcising the shame of the last two years of failure. The spread of plague in San Francisco was never far from his mind, yet he had no energy to return to the city and allow another defeat to enter his life.

With Blue no longer there to open doors and smooth over disagreements, federal doctors felt their influence in the city weaken. City, state and federal health officers were in open conflict with one another, leaving a coordinated response impossible. Under guidance from Governor Gage, state health inspectors began refusing invitations to attend the autopsies of suspected plague victims and would then claim that federal doctors were conducting them in secret and lying about the results. All attempts to force state health officials to acknowledge the reality of the plague were blocked, ignored or disregarded. One state doctor, when reached by telephone at his office by Marine Hospital officers informing him of the planned autopsy of a plague victim, pretended to be one of his clerks and said that his supervisor was away on business. Federal

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