Il "flagello delle Indie". L'epidemia colerica del 1836-37 nel Mezzogiorno

As well as being the last of the Italian states to be hit by the cholera epidemic of 1836-37, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was also the one with the heaviest death toll, both in absolute terms and in relation to the population. In addition to the huge loss of human life, there was also economic damage, due to the measures to combat the epidemic - from the sanitary cordons on land and at sea to the opening of suburban cemeteries - and the restrictions imposed on trade. From the dramatic sanitary situation, the Kingdom emerged significantly affected in its demographic structure and impoverished. The historical reconstruction of the impact of cholera on southern society highlights its many repercussions at a political level - with the highly topical dilemma between containing the contagions and safeguarding productive activities -, at a regulatory and medical level (scientists are divided between epidemicists and contagionists while the most fanciful theories about the origin of the disease proliferate). But cholera did not only bring death, pain and misery: public hygiene policies, burial methods, the centre-periphery dialectic at the administrative level changed, with a certain degree of autonomy gained by local authorities. These led to original developments and a certain modernisation of a still autocratic state