Epidemics

Aside from Mexican civil and church records, what type of medical records would have been kept that would document a persons death, particularly when an epidemic struck? Are there such records available online? Available if I write a letter to some office/department in Mexico?

Gracias

Hi Jospuen

This is indeed a very interesting topic. You might want to try with an academic article which has a good bibliography - sometimes its helpful to see what researchers have as their primary sources, which seem to be what you are looking for.

This is a start: When half of the population died: the epidemic of hemorrhagic fevers of 1576 in Mexico
https://academic.oup.com/femsle/article/240/1/1/536409

You could also find out who cites this article via social science research index.

Regards
Denise Fastrup

gracias

Denise,

Of course. I completely forgot about the academic point of view. I'm sure many a papers have been written on this topic.

I guess you can say I was looking for another "magic bullet" in genealogy-though I know they are far and few between.

JSTOR is another resource I have accessed in the past. If nothing else this can give me/us a historical aspect of what our ancestors went through. I find that very few of my ancestors "cause" of death was recorded-maybe not even understood.

With civil records only going back to 1856 (aprox)...that continues to leave few resources...thanks for the insight.

marty