![]() | Death Is All around Us: Corpses, Chaos, and Public Health in Porfirian Mexico City Late nineteenth-century Mexico was a country rife with health problems. In 1876, one out of every nineteen people died prematurely in Mexico City, a staggeringly high rate when compared to other major Western world capitals at the time, which saw more modest premature death rates of one out of fifty-two (London), one out of forty-four (Paris), and one out of thirty-five (Madrid). It is not an exaggeration to maintain that each day dozens of bodies could be found scattered throughout the streets of Mexico City, making the capital city one of the most unsanitary places in the Western Hemisphere. Jonathan M. Weber is a teacher and independent scholar living in Dallas, Texas. He received his PhD from the Department of History at Florida State University in 2013 and has worked in a wide range of archives in the United States and Mexico to research this study. He has presented this work at more than a dozen conferences, including the American Historical Association, Latin American Studies Association, and the Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies. |
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