UNDER THE SHADOW OF COQUELUCHE: POPULATION AND MORTALITY IN QUITO BETWEEN 1910 AND 1923

Abstract

This article attempts to reconstruct the demographic dynamics of Quito between 1910 and 1923, during which time one of the most important epidemics of the Western world, the Spanish influenza (1918- 1919) and for the city the typhoid in 1913. This article attempts to rebuild Quito's demographic dynamics between 1910 and 1923, a period in which one of the most important epidemics in the Western world occurs. Mortality and its various aspects and manifestations is its main explanatory vehicle, so much has to do with health problems, the causes of mortality, particularly the problem of child mortality. The birth rate at this time, as in the previous ones, always suffered from a clear under-registration, given the difficulty of consigning children who died before being baptized or, by this time, having been registered in the Civil Registry, consequently they were also not consigned when they died. Of the 15 diseases established by the International Health Code as whistleblowers, five were the strongest in the city: dysentery, erysidla, typhoid, measles and tuberculosis. The Spanish flu is only an isolated milestone in the epidemiological complex of the city, but it did not alter - although it records - the rate of natural growth of the city was actually the typhoid and coqueluche that was the permanent martyrdom of the city.