Rummors, fear or epidemy? The bubonic plague of 1913-14 in the Atlantic Coast of Colombia

By the end of the 1800s , international trade and steam navigation made way for the third bubonic plague pandemy, which started in China in 1891 and reached America in 1898. This calamity apparently arrived in Colombia's coast between 1913 and 1915, during the apex of Pasteur medicine. The deficiencies of Colombian public scientific and sanitary apparat, concerning the emerging bacteriology and epidemiology, prevented the government and the medical body from reacting against the fear and rummor of epidemy, which negatively affected the trade. The authorities were also unable to fight this problem with adequate diagnosis, enferms treatment, urban sanitation, and isolation of infected places. These difficulties led to a confrontation between the government and the medical body, inciting an argument about the existence of the plague. This discussion was settled by the North American official medicine that, in its verdict, gave preference to the commercial interests of the United States, ignoring the sanitary urgencies of the Colombian Atlantic coast.

bubonic plague; health at harbours; urban hygiene; Colombian medicine; bacteriology