Argentina's 1871 Yellow Fever: The Epidemic That Remade Buenos Aires

In 1871, Buenos Aires was struck by a yellow fever epidemic that killed roughly 8% of its population within months. This episode follows the city's desperate response: the collapse of public health, the flight of the wealthy to suburbs like Belgrano and Flores, and the creation of a municipal cemetery that became a mass grave. We focus on the largely Irish-born Dr. Thomas Gibson, who ran the makeshift fever hospital in the Recoleta district, and on the lesser-known role of the city's Afro-Argentine community, who were scapegoated and then decimated by the disease. We discuss how the epidemic accelerated the city's physical expansion, the professionalization of Argentine medicine, and the birth of a public health bureaucracy. We also touch on the strange afterlife of the plague in Buenos Aires memory — why it's so forgotten compared to the 1918 flu. Specific terms include fiebre amarilla, la Convalescencia, Hospital de la Recoleta, Dr. Thomas Gibson, Dr. José María Ramos Mejía, Cementerio del Norte (now Recoleta Cemetery), Barrio San Telmo, and the 1871 census.

#YellowFever #BuenosAires #1871 #Epidemic #PublicHealth #DrThomasGibson #Recoleta #AfroArgentine #SanTelmo #CementerioDelNorte #LaConvalescencia #FiebreAmarilla #Argentina #HistoryOfMedicine #19thCentury #UrbanHistory #Plague #FexingoHistory

Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo