Pandemic in Potosí: Fear, Loathing, and Public Piety in a Colonial Mining Metropolis
Kris Lane, "Pandemic in Potosí: Fear, Loathing, and Public Piety in a Colonial Mining Metropolis "
English | ISBN: 0271091983 | 2022 | 152 pages | PDF | 16 MB
English | ISBN: 0271091983 | 2022 | 152 pages | PDF | 16 MB
In 1719, a deadly and highly contagious disease took hold of the Imperial Villa of Potosí, a silver mining metropolis in what is now Bolivia. Within a year, the pathogen had killed some 22,000 people, just over a third of the city’s residents. Victims collapsed with fever, body aches, and effusions of blood from the nose and mouth. Most died within days. The great Andean pandemic of 1717–22 was likely the most destructive disease to strike South America since the days of the Spanish conquest.
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