Like many other cities, the city of Tulancingo has experienced various health woes, such as the arrival of the Matrazahuatl virus, cholera, and Spanish flu epidemics that claimed the lives of thousands of Tulancingo residents.
There are undoubtedly more diseases on record that struck the population of the Tulancingo Valley, but those with the highest mortality rates were Matrazahuatl virus, cholera, and Spanish influenza.
In 1737, during the Viceroyalty of New Spain, a deadly plague broke out that struck Spanish and indigenous peoples, according to América Molina in her book La Nueva España y el matlazáhuatl 1736-1739 “Tulancingo was one of the areas most affected by the plague, which claimed 2,377 lives.
According to history teacher Christian Eliel Pérez Hernandez, the first symptoms were headaches, flu and fatigue, followed by swelling of the liver, heart and lungs, and later black and purple spots appearing all over the body. The final stage is bleeding from the nose and ears.
In 1824, Tulancingo, part of the state of Mexico, began reporting outbreaks of cholera and typhus, diseases that struck the city for several years; more than 3,000 people died.
By around 1849, health jurisdictions issued a series of recommendations to prevent the spread of plague, and a doctor of the time shared an effective formula against cholera that contained 12 ingredients, including chamomile, fennel, almond oil, and Concentrated Citric Acid; These documents are available at the Tulancingo Municipal Archives.
Another epidemic that swept through the region was the Spanish Flu of 1918, which wreaked havoc on people at the time, especially the working class, as they could not afford medicines.
At the state level, the Spanish flu began to hit workers at the Hidalgo mines, so authorities closed the mines to prevent further spread, according to the National Autonomous University of Mexico institute.
In 1919, the Tulancingo City Council again made recommendations to railroad workers to prevent them from contracting the flu, as railroads were the city’s commercial and economic engine at the time.
“It would be horrifying to see carts full of corpses that were later not buried in the Pantheon, as it would have been if they had taken away the dying people returning from the cemetery, spreading terror and panic until the strong impression on them causing death among his companions,” the article reads. Tulancingo Roberto Ocadiz Works of Tulancingo and its surroundings, from 1940.