The first Asian cholera pandemic entered the Iberian Peninsula in 1833 via Portugal. In Andalusia, cholera persisted for 16 months, between August 1833 and January 1835. The traditional account of the epidemic, which limited the presence of cholera to western Andalusia in 1833, blamed the exacerbation in the summer of 1834 on the march of an army corps from Portugal. The epidemic spread during the autumn of 1833 from the western provinces to the eastern provinces by means of maritime traffic. The prolonged presence of the disease occurred in the midst of a complicated political situation: the reform of the absolutist regime after the death of Ferdinand VII and the beginning of the first Carlist war. In Andalusia, the first barriers – sea and land – were applied between 18 and 24 August 1831 in response to the news that Gibraltar was suffering from a suspicious disease, leading to the closure of the border with the Portuguese country in February 1833. The upsurge of the pandemic led to the second “cordon sanitaire” formed by troops, until it was lifted in August. Preventive policy, however, moved away from quarantines and cordons to focus on urban sanitation measures and aid for the sick. The majority of the series of sick and dead cases, with modifications, meet the typical conditions of Holomantic outbreaks: a rapid rise in the number of cases, a more prolonged maintenance of an uneven pattern, and a somewhat slower decline. The persistence of the disease in parts of eastern Andalusia during the winter and spring of 1834 gave the presentation of this choleric epidemic its peculiar west-east-west development. In western points, such as Cadiz and Seville, the epidemic occurred on two occasions, but sufficiently separated in time and with no evidence of this insidious interregnum.
Collection: Graphics
Project: 3. Rural world and urban world in the formation of the European identity., 4. Family, daily life and social inequality in Europe.
Chronology: XIX
Scope: Secondary Education, Baccalaureate, University
Resource type: Graph
Format: Bar chart
Source: Rodríguez Ocaña, Esteban, «Morbimortalidad del cólera epidémico de 1833–35 en Andalucía», Revista de demografía Histórica, vol. 10, nº2, 1992, pp. 87–111.
Language: Spanish
Date: 1992
Owner: Álvaro Romero González (Modernalia)
Copyright: © Esteban Rodríguez Ocaña © Revista de Demografía Histórica
Abstract: Evolution of choleric mortality in different regions of Andalusia from 1833 to 1835
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