What is it about?
This article tells the story of an epidemic in colonial Mexico, in the city of Puebla, specifically, and explains how the most important hospital in the city reacted to the pandemic and how these events helped to develop the hospital as a modern institution.
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Photo by Elesban Landero Berriozábal on Unsplash
Why is it important?
The article weaves issues of social justice, architecture (of hospitals, in this case), and epidemics, in a colonial context in the Americas, in colonial Mexico, specifically, in the early modern era.
Perspectives
The article explains interesting historical concepts, such as how hospitals developed, and one of the most interesting facets of writing this piece was understanding how people viewed death in colonial Mexico, namely, as an unavoidable fact that you had to prepare for, in religious terms, to ensure a good afterlife. Religious beliefs in the afterlife were so deeply entrenched that, more important than passing away, was the idea of being ready when the time came.
JUAN LUIS BURKE
University of Maryland at College Park
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Social Inequity and Hospital Infrastructure in the City of Puebla, Mexico, 1737, September 2021, Intellect,
DOI: 10.1386/9781789384703_23.
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