Epilogue• 273young assistants from around the globe, succeeding in identifying the bacilli
that caused tuberculosis and cholera.
Others began researching various diseases and their microbes with im-
pressive results. By the last decade of the nineteenth century, “microbe
hunters” had identified the pathogenic organisms for anthrax, cholera, diph-
theria, leprosy, malaria, pneumonia, strep sore throat, tetanus, tuberculosis,
and typhoid,^21 leading the way to new therapeutics and eventually to the
wonder drugs of the twentieth century.
A major plague epidemic broke out in China as the curtain was falling on
the nineteenth century. Fear and hope combined in a dramatic race to find
the microbial source and natural habitat of this ancient scourge. On May 4 ,
1894 , Dr. James Lowson, director of medical services at the British colony of
Hong Kong, booked passage on a night boat to plague-ridden Canton. Low-
son had heard rumors that the pestilence was spreading from China to Hong
Kong. After stopping for a vigorous game of tennis, he accompanied a phy-
sician friend to the Canton city hospital to see the plague at first hand. Back
in Hong Kong, the colonial authorities denied the presence of plague, but
Chinese residents were dying at an alarming rate. The signs and symptoms
would have been familiar to both Hodges and Boghurst.
By May 10 there were twenty cases of plague in Tung Wah hospital, the
only facility in Hong Kong that made the Chinese population comfortable
by employing Eastern as well as Western medical practices. Lowson, in
charge of the colony’s hospitals and the treatment of infectious diseases, was
at the center of a crisis. He immediately turned the ship Hygeainto a quar-
antine facility on the water, away from the population. On the night of the
thirteenth, he wrote in his diary, “Hot sun. Cases pouring in. Outlook appal-
ling.” A Chinese medical worker along with twenty-four other persons died
that day, and twelve sick persons entered the Hygeafacility. On the following
day twenty-two more corpses were reported, but a far different count ap-
peared in the London Times: 100 fatalities a day, a total of 1 , 500. The Times
also reported that 100 , 000 persons had fled Hong Kong, perhaps exaggerat-
ing the mass exodus from the city of 150 , 000 persons but not the panic caus-
ing it. Lowson sent forth an urgent plea for medical expertise in identifying
and treating the disease.
Seven weeks after Lowson’s visit to Canton, two expert microbiologists,
one Japanese, one French, arrived in Hong Kong within three days of each
other, after receiving urgent messages by telegram. Thus began a contest be-
tween rival nationalities and competing schools of medical analysis, each