Dr. Joseph Kinyoun was a leader in the diagnosis and prevention of infectious diseases in America. He created the Hygienic Laboratory, the nation’s first federal laboratory of medical bacteriology which later became the National Institutes of Health.
Rupert Blue was a physician in the Marine Hospital Service, the precursor to the modern U.S. Public Health Service. In 1901 he launched a public health campaign that ended a deadly bubonic plague outbreak in San Francisco.
On May 28, 1900, San Francisco policemen formed a perimeter around Chinatown, and set about building an eight-foot high wall around the district using cement blocks and barbed wire.