Francisco Javier Muñiz was an Argentine colonel, legislator, and medical doctor. He treated patients and died during the Great Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1871. He was considered the first important naturalist from Argentina.
Francisco Javier Muñiz
Diego Abad de Santillán, Francisco Muñiz
Monument to Francisco Javier Muñiz, Cementerio de la Recoleta, Buenos Aires
Yellow fever in Buenos Aires
The Yellow fever in Buenos Aires was a series of epidemics that took place in 1852, 1858, 1870 and 1871, the latter being a disaster that killed about 8% of Porteños: in a city where the daily death rate was less than 20, there were days that killed more than 500 people. The Yellow Fever would have come from Asunción, Paraguay, brought by Argentine soldiers returning from the war just fought in that country, having previously spread in the city of Corrientes. As its worst, Buenos Aires population was reduced to a third because of the exodus of those escaping the scourge.
Hearse during the 1871 epidemic in Buenos Aires
The house where the first case was registered (published on Caras y Caretas in 1899)
An Episode of Yellow Fever in Buenos Aires (1871), oil on canvas by Juan Manuel Blanes, National Museum of Visual Arts
The monument erected in 1873 to the victims of the yellow fever epidemic of 1871, in the centre of Parque Ameghino, in the neighbourhood of Parque Patricios, Buenos Aires (By Manuel Ferrari)
