Joseph James Kinyoun: Discoverer of Bubonic Plague in America and Father of the National Institutes of Health

289 Pages·2021·26.113 MB·English

by  Joseph K. Houts Jr.

Joseph James Kinyoun
Dr. Joseph J. Kinyoun, assistant surgeon, U.S. Marine Hospital Service, Staten Island,
1887, and Elizabeth Perry Kinyoun, his wife, in presidential reception dress, Wash-
ington, D.C., 1887.
Joseph James Kinyoun
Discoverer of Bubonic Plague
in America and Father
of the National Institutes of Health
Joseph K. Houts, Jr.
Foreword by David M. Morens, M.D.
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina
ISBN (print) 978–1 -4766–8 290–7
ISBN (ebook) 978–1 -4766–4 373–1
Library of Congress and British Library
cataloguing data are available
Library of Congress Control Number 2021044597
© 2021 Joseph K. Houts, Jr. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
Front cover image: inset Dr. Joseph J. Kinyoun,
assistant surgeon, U.S. Marine Hospital Service, Staten Island, 1887;
UMHS Quarantine scuttle Gen Stenberg, bearing quarantine flag
on bow and United States flag on stern, San Francisco Bay, 1890 (author collection)
Printed in the United States of America
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
To my loving family:
wife Noreen, son Joe III, d aughter-in-law Kristin,
daughter Katie, s on-in-law Brandon
and my four wonderful grandchildren,
Charles Kinyoun Houts, Mara Collins, Mary Cate
and Marin Claire Lorenz.
They are truly the greatest thing
to have ever happened in my life.
Love,
Dad
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I want to acknowledge and thank
my family for all their patience and support during the pro-
cess of writing this book. Second, I thank the following
people at the National Institutes of Health: Dr. David M.
Morens, Senior Advisor, National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Disease; Barbara Faye Harkins, retired Chief His-
torian; Victoria Harden; Dr. Paul Theerman, former Head
of Images and Archives, History of Medicine Division,
National Library of Medicine; Intern Eva Ahrens; and, lastly,
Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director, National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Diseases. These individuals from the National
Institutes of Health, especially Dr. Morens, have been invalu-
able to my completion of this book.
And as always, I owe gratitude to my longtime mentor,
Dr. William E. Parrish, retired from Westminster College
and Mississippi State University. He has been of paramount
help not only in his editing, but his ongoing encourage-
ment to complete this manuscript and my other historical
publications.
As a final note, I want to thank my great-grandmother
Lizzie Kinyoun and my grandmother Alice (Allie) Eccles
Kinyoun Houts. Between these ladies, they preserved and
documented the family’s rich history and provided safe-
keeping to those papers documenting its past. Without this
archive, all my publications would have been lost to the ages.
I am eternally indebted to them for their foresight in con-
serving and passing these papers on to me. My grandmother
Allie was the family historian, and she alone instilled in me
the love of not only history, but also our family’s role in the
making of America.
vi
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments vi
Foreword by David M. Morens, MD 1
Introduction 3
I. The War Was Now Over 13
II. The Marine Hospital Service 20
III. The European Influence 30
IV. The New Frontier 37
V. The Pursuit: 1890–1891 46
VI. A Whirlwind of Discovery and Research: 1891–1894 60
VII. Widening the Realm: 1895–1896 79
VIII. The First Decade 92
IX. Abroad Again 102
X. War and the Third Pandemic 111
XI. 1899: The Year of Great Upheaval 119
XII. Angel Island 130
XIII. Y. Pestis 144
XIV. Venomous Pens 165
XV. Darkening Clouds 187
XVI. The Price of Truth 203
XVII. Farewells 222
Chapter Notes 235
Bibliography 267
Index 273
vii