Aspettando il colera: le misura di prevenzione attuate nel Regno delle Due Sicilie nel 1831

Originating from the Bay of Bengal, the second cholera pandemic (1828-1838) spread with impressive speed to the rest of Asia, North Africa, and finally to Europe, spreading terror everywhere and claiming millions of victims. Its march westward saw the countries of northern and central Europe succumb, and only from 1834 were the southern reaches of the continent, such as Portugal and Spain, affected. The states of the Italian peninsula were invaded only in 1835, and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, as is known, in the two-year period 1836-37. Long before cholera penetrated the borders of the Kingdom, however, the Bourbon government made every effort to prepare preventive measures deemed suitable to prevent contagion. During 1831, the following measures (among others) were adopted: the refusal to admit goods and people from infected territories into the Kingdom; quarantines for those coming from suspicious areas; the application of martial law for any type of infringement of health laws; the organization of a sanitary cordon, first only by sea and then also by land, along the entire coastal profile of the Kingdom. It was a vast and organic preventive action, which required a considerable organizational effort, and involved the use of enormous material and human resources. The purpose of this contribution is to reconstruct this phase of the Bourbon health policy, and to evaluate (also in the light of current epidemiological concepts) the effectiveness of this policy in relation to the aims it set itself.