The news today is dominated by the anarchist attempt on prime minister Antonio Maura near the Mercé on the 12th, the visit of Spanish king Alfonso to Catalonia (“The Velocipedists Club raised an obelisk formed of flowers”), and the Russo-Japanese war. However, a couple of interstitial text ads caught my eye in the edition of La Vanguardia to which I am referring:
Dr VALDÉS GARCIA de MONTEVIDEO’s LIQUID MEAT, powerful and incomparable nourishment.
And on another page:
Artificial Stomach, indispensable in curing ailments of the stomach and intestines.
The Spanish still take navel gazing a good few centimetres deeper than the Brits, but back then there was serious reason to be concerned about the state of your insides. Here, from the same edition of the paper, is a summary prepared by the Instituto Geográfico y Estadístico of what people in Barcelona died of in March 1904:
|
cause of death |
no of victims |
|
Suicide |
0 |
|
Old age |
2 |
|
Puerperal septicaemia and other puerperal contretemps |
3 |
|
Scarlet fever |
3 |
|
Whooping cough |
3 |
|
Intermittent fevers and cachexia paládica |
4 |
|
Measles |
10 |
|
Violence |
11 |
|
Influenza |
14 |
|
Disformities |
15 |
|
Diptheria and croup |
16 |
|
Typhoid fevers |
17 |
|
Ailments of the genito-urinary system |
24 |
|
Smallpox |
42 |
|
Ailments of the digestive system |
96 |
|
Tuberculosis |
144 |
|
Ailments of the nervous system |
194 |
|
Ailments of the circulatory and respiratory system |
391 |
|
Other |
238 |
|
Total |
1,227 |
The production of detailed statistics of this type was in large measure a consequence of a gradual increase in state intervention in health, housing and employment towards the end of the nineteenth century. Three key dates were the formation of a Commission for Social Reform in 1883 and of an Institute for Social Reform in 1903, and the passing of Spain’s first industrial safety act in 1900 (more in this article by Antonio Buj Buj).
According to the article, the total of 1,227 deaths for March constitutes a monthly mortality rate of 2.30/1000 inhabitants, as against a birth rate of 2.31/1000. This places Barcelona in roughly the same territory occupied by places like Manchester and Liverpool 50 years earlier. The article notes that 81 of the 1,246 infants born in March were illegitimate, but no mention is made as to why such a large number of deaths during one of the least polluted and mildest months of the year are due to respiratory ailments (and these are not freak data).
The answer lay in the effects on workers of an unregulated textile industry, exacerbated by dreadful living conditions and expensive, poor-quality food. And, as in other parts of the world, the main factor in reducing mortality rates was the very gradual introduction and enforcement of legislation by governments of a variety of political persuasions during the C20th. The miserable rate at which real change took place helped fuel demand for Barcelona’s thriving pharmaceutical industry (old post), but medicine, while not merely a placebo, principally served to palliate distress. Which, in turn, may explain why the stats above are followed in the original page layout by another text ad as follows:
A coffee and a glass of Licor Angelus, it’s not a sin.
I think that means I’m allowed that glass of whisky to help get over my cold.
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