Joseph James Kinyoun (November 25, 1860 – February 14, 1919) was an American physician and the founder of the United States' Hygienic Laboratory, the predecessor of the National Institutes of Health.

[1] His career was nearly ended by his insistence, while serving as head of the Marine Hospital Service in San Francisco, on taking vigorous measures to contain the spread of the bubonic plague.

He resigned his position in 1901 after being attacked for his diagnoses, including claims by California Governor Henry Gage that he and other federal employees had falsified evidence by injecting cadavers with bacilli.

Kinyoun's later career was spent in private companies and as a professor of bacteriology and pathology at George Washington University[2] before becoming a bacteriologist for the District of Columbia Health Department, a position he held until his death.

On October 4, 1886, Kinyoun began his career in the Marine Hospital Service at Staten Island Quarantine Station as an assistant surgeon, taking over the direction of the Laboratory of Hygiene in 1887.

As the director of the Hygienic Laboratory, he researched on a plethora of different infectious diseases and their respective etiology and vaccine treatment while urging necessary hospital protocols and regulations for isolation of infected patients.

[9] In this atmosphere of grave danger, in January 1900, Kinyoun ordered all ships coming to San Francisco from China, Japan, Australia, and Hawaii to fly yellow flags to warn of possible plague on board.

Cargo from Honolulu unloaded at a dock near the outfall of Chinatown's sewers may have allowed rats carrying the plague to leave the ship and transmit the infection.

[10] Rumors of the plague's presence abounded in the city, quickly gaining the notice of authorities from MHS stationed on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, including Chief Kinyoun.

[10][15] Late at night, Kellogg ran the suspicious samples of lymph fluid to Angel Island to be tested on animals in Kinyoun's better-equipped laboratory - an operation that would take at least four days.

Governor Gage publicly denied the existence of any pestilential outbreak in San Francisco, fearing that any word of the bubonic plague's presence would deeply damage the city's and state's economy.

Surgeon General Walter Wyman instructed Kinyoun to place Chinatown under a second quarantine, as well as blocking all East Asians from entering state borders.

Wyman also instructed Kinyoun to inoculate all persons of Asian heritage in Chinatown, using an experimental vaccine developed by Waldemar Haffkine, one known to have severe side effects.

[7] Gage responded to the declaration by urging California's other elected officials, as well as party leaders and delegates to the Republican National Convention, to put pressure on President William McKinley to reverse the MHS's plague eradication measures and to remove Kinyoun from his position.

He was ultimately exonerated when testimony showed that soldiers pursuing an escaped prisoner had fired warning shots at the fisherman, who was suspected of aiding the escapee, and that Kinyoun had actually intervened to defend him.

[7] Despite the secret agreement for Kinyoun's removal, Gage went back on his promise of assisting federal authorities and continued to obstruct their study and quarantine efforts.

The bill failed in the California State Legislature, yet other laws to gag reports amongst the medical community were enacted and $100,000 was allocated to a public campaign led by Gage to deny the plague's existence.

After leaving government service, Kinyoun went to work for H. K. Mulford Company in Glenolden, Pennsylvania (now part of Merck & Co.),[23] then as a professor of bacteriology and pathology at George Washington University[2] before becoming a bacteriologist for the District of Columbia Health Department, a position he held until his death.

He also worked with colleagues at the MHS and other agencies on a variety of public health problems, especially water quality, bacillary dysentery, and hookworm disease in poor Southern children.

In 1909, Kinyoun served as president of the American Society for Microbiology, which he had helped form more than a decade earlier; he devoted his presidential address to the future of immunology and the still-novel concept of natural and acquired immunity.