The Fever of War

Epidemic Typhus and Public Health in Revolutionary Mexico City, 1915-1917

Bibliographic Data

ID2831926
AuthorsRyan M Alexander, Ryan Alexander (0000-0002-5785-6411, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume100
Issue1
Pages63-92
Publication date2020-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHispanic American Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0018-2168 • E-ISSN: 1527-1900
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/00182168-7993089
OpenAlexW3003245932
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited20

This article examines Mexico City's typhus epidemic of 1915-16 and makes three central claims. First, the federal response to the outbreak, while laudable in light of the grim circumstances, was disjointed and excessively bureaucratic. Second, the epidemic drew out long-standing stereotypes of poor indigenous populations, leading people to make misguided linkages between the high incidence of typhus within those populations and their supposed moral or intellectual shortcomings. Third, the typhus epidemic prompted fundamental reforms to the nation's public health system. As a delegate to the constitutional convention of 1917, the nation's chief public health officer, general and doctor José María Rodríguez, successfully promoted his vision of a "sanitary dictatorship" that would operate according to strict authoritarian principles for the sake of efficiency. The epidemic thus shaped not only the human experience in that moment but also the course of revolutionary political reform in the years to come

Authoritarianism · Bureaucracy · Convention · Democracy · Dictatorship · Indigenous · Political science · Politics · Public health · Typhus · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Law · Medicine · Psychedelics and Drug Studies · Public Administration · Yersinia bacterium, plague, ectoparasites research

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