A devastating disease: smallpox in Pelotas (RS) at the turn of the 19th and early 20th Century

Abstract

The article discusses the appearance of two smallpox outbreaks in Pelotas, Rio Grande do Sul, at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, a period marked by the beginning of an economic crisis in the city, caused by the closure of several salted meat production factories, which were sustained by enslaved labor. The objective of the study is to understand how the city, which followed the positivist doctrine in its Castilhista version, organized itself to curb the existence of a contagious disease that brought stigma and death to the afflicted, mostly represented by poor people, who could not access general hospitals to receive care and, in many cases, had to wait for the opening of isolation spaces, whose location was the subject of disputes. The study is linked to the social history of disease and uses document analysis and newspaper research as its methodology.