THE GHOST OF DIPHTHERIA IN SPAIN: LEGISLATIVE POLICIES, 1886-1923

Abstract

During the final decades of the 19th century, diphtheria epidemics became a serious threat that jeopardized the social stability of the Monarchist Restoration in Spain due to its high infant mortality and the combination with after epidemics, such as cholera. The response of the State was an important development of legislative policies oriented to the control of infectious diseases from a hygienic paradigm and a preventive, punitive and biopolitical nature. This article aims, on the one hand, to contextualize diphtheria at the time of the Pasteurian revolution and its significance in Spain, and, on the other, it tries to present the different legislative strategies of the Restoration against the proliferation of this infectious disease between 1886, a moment of epidemic development of diphtheria in Madrid, which the Restoration translates into normative practices, and 1923, the beginning of a new era in which a different health policy paradigm was implanted.