Typhus and yellow fever in the independence of Mexico

• May 4, 2024

Diseases increased in the War of Independence of Mexico, due to the whole situation that a warlike event of this type triggers, such as fear, sick people and thousands of deaths.

According to Dr. Ana María Carrillo, historian of the Department of Public Health of the Faculty of Medicine of the UNAM, the Typhus greatly affected the population during armed conflicts:

"The typhus left sequels in all the population of that time. This is transmitted by a louse that comes in contact with the body of a person. Currently this disease is totally eradicated in Mexico. "

And it is that from 1781 to 1833 the population of New Spain faced a series of catastrophes, manifested in biological pathologies, such as typhus , diarrhea , smallpox Y yellow fever , coupled with the famine, misery and the plague that prevailed in those years.

In the case of yellow fever , it is known that it is transmitted by the mosquito Aedes aegypti , that nowadays, is the cause of dengue :

"Currently the yellow fever it no longer presents in our country, but what we have not yet been able to eradicate is simple dengue and hemorrhagic, which is transmitted by this same vector and which has caused so many deaths in Mexico ".

The ravages of tuberculosis

Another of the diseases that raged during the War of Independence of Mexico (1810-1821) and the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), was the tuberculosis , which is caused by the bacillus Koch.

Carrillo says: "This is transmitted through the patient's sputum and also through the meat and milk of sick animals. In both conflicts, it was fought in the twentieth century, with very good results, but today it is a re-emerging disease due to resistance of the bacillus to drugs and other reasons. "

During the eighteenth century the population of the cities experienced a growth in the population, which made it necessary to increase the changes in the city aimed at urbanization and provide public services to the population that populated the cities.

The growth of the cities caused that the streets, the sources, the interior of the housings, the streams, springs, the churches, the markets and the places of work turned into true centers of infection, since between the plain people it did not exist concern to keep public spaces clean, nor among the authorities there was interest in legislating on this problem.