The Yellow Fever in Buenos Aires was a series of epidemics that took place in 1852, 1858, 1870 and 1871, the latter being a disaster that killed about 8% of Porteños: in a city were the daily death rate was less than 20, there were days that killed more than 500 people. The Yellow Fever would have come from Asunción, Paraguay, brought by Argentine soldiers returning from the war that had just fought in that country, having previously spread in the city of Corrientes. As its worst, Buenos Aires population was reduced to a third because of the exodus of those escaping the scourge.
Some of the main causes of the spread of this disease were the insufficient supply of potable water, pollution of ground water by human waste, warm and humid climate in summer, overcrowding of black people and, since 1871, of European immigrants who entered incessantly and without sanitary measures to the country. Also, the saladeros (manufacturing establishments for producing salted and dried meat) polluted the Matanza River (south of the city limits), as well as infected ditches with debris went through the city favor the spread of mosquito Aedes aegypti who was responsible of transmitting Yellow Fever.
A witness to the epidemic of 1871, named Mardoqueo Navarro, wrote on April 13 the following description in his diary:
Businesses closed, streets deserted, a shortage of doctors, deads without assistance, flees who can...
Since 1881, thanks to Cuban physician Carlos Finlay, it was known that the transmitting agent of Yellow Fever was mosquito Aedes aegypti. Before that discovery, doctors attributed the cause of many epidemics to what they called "miasmas" floating in the air.
Yellow Fever (or "black vomit", as it was called due to bleeding that occurs in the gastrointestinal) caused an epidemic in Buenos Aires in 1852. However, by a note addressed to practitioner Soler is known that outbreaks occurred even before that year.[1] As for the 1870 epidemic, it would come from Brazil from merchant ship[1] and caused 100 deaths.[2]