{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,12]],"date-time":"2026-06-12T09:55:41Z","timestamp":1781258141583,"version":"3.54.1"},"reference-count":111,"publisher":"Cambridge University Press (CUP)","issue":"3","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2018,6,11]],"date-time":"2018-06-11T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1528675200000},"content-version":"unspecified","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/terms"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["www.cambridge.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Med. Hist."],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2018,7]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>The 1899\/1900 arrival of bubonic plague in Argentina had thrown the model status of Buenos Aires as a hygienic city into crisis. Where the idea of foreign threats and imported epidemics had dominated the thinking of Argentina\u2019s sanitarians at that time, plague renewed concerns about hidden threats within the fabric of the capital\u2019s dense environment; concerns that led to new sanitary measures and unprecedented rat-campaigns supported by the large-scale application of sulphur dioxide. The article tells the story of early twentieth-century urban sanitation in Buenos Aires through the lens of a new industrial disinfection apparatus. The Aparato Marot, also known as Sulfurozador was acquired and integrated in the capital\u2019s sanitary administration by the epidemiologist Jos\u00e9 Penna in 1906 to materialise two key lessons learned from plague. First, the machine was supposed to translate the successful disinfection practices of global maritime sanitation into urban epidemic control in Argentina. Second, the machine\u2019s design enabled public health authorities to reinvigorate a traditional hygienic concern for the entirety of the city\u2019s terrain. While the Sulfurozador offered effective destruction of rats, it promised also a comprehensive \u2013 and utopian \u2013 disinfection of the whole city, freeing it from all imaginable pathogens, insects as well as\u00a0rodents. In 1910, the successful introduction of the Sulfurozador encouraged Argentina\u2019s medico-political elite to introduce a new principle of \u2018general prophylaxis\u2019. This article places the apparatus as a technological modernisation of traditional sanitary practices in the bacteriological age, which preserved the urban environment \u2013\u00a0\u2018el\u00a0terreno\u2019\u00a0\u2013 as a principal site of intervention. Thus, the Sulfurozador allowed the \u2018higienistas\u2019 to sustain a long-standing utopian vision of all-encompassing social, bodily and political hygiene into the twentieth century.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1017\/mdh.2018.37","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2018,6,11]],"date-time":"2018-06-11T08:14:20Z","timestamp":1528704860000},"page":"360-382","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1017\/policypage","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":4,"title":["Fumigating the Hygienic Model City: Bubonic Plague and the Sulfurozador in Early-Twentieth-Century Buenos Aires"],"prefix":"10.1017","volume":"62","author":[{"given":"Lukas","family":"Engelmann","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"56","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2018,6,11]]},"reference":[{"key":"S0025727318000376_r100","unstructured":"Amador, op. cit. (note 4), 7 ff."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r97","unstructured":"Armus, op. cit. (note 13), 535."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r93","unstructured":"Ibid., 243."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r91","unstructured":"Ibid., 263."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r90","unstructured":"Penna, op. cit. (note 20), 192."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r89","unstructured":"Penna, quoted in Kohl, op. cit. (note 8), 80."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r88","unstructured":"Penna, op. cit. (note 20), 173\u201393."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r86","unstructured":"Ibid., 168."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r85","unstructured":"Penna, op. cit. (note 20), 161."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r83","unstructured":"Magny, ibid., 98 f."},{"key":"#cr-split#-S0025727318000376_r82.1","unstructured":"11. A. Chantemesse, 'Rapport sur les Experiences de Destruction des Rats a Bord des Navires au Moyen de L'Anhydride Sulfureux Liquide', in Mininstere de l'Interieur (ed.), Recueil des actes officiels et documents int??ressant l'hygi??ne publique travaux du comite consultatif d'hygiene publique (Paris, 1905), 191-214"},{"key":"#cr-split#-S0025727318000376_r82.2","unstructured":"12. Gabriel Magny, Rats et peste (Paris: Paris: Bonvalet-Jouve, 1907)."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r81","unstructured":"Ibid., 168."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r78","unstructured":"Meik, op. cit. (note 13), 15. Archive of the City of Buenos Aires: \u2018Memoria de la Intendencia Municipal de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires correspondiente a 1889, presentada al H. Concejo Deliberante por el Intendente Seeber\u2019 (Buenos Aires, 1891), 129; \u2018Memoria Presentada al Concejo Deliberante por el Intendente Municipal Se\u00f1or Emilio V. Bunge; A\u00f1o 1895\u2019 (Buenos Aires, 1896), 60; \u2018Memoria de la Intendencia Municipal; a\u00f1o 1905\u2019 (Buenos Aires, 1906), 75."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r92","unstructured":"Ibid., 265."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r77","unstructured":"Ibid."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r76","unstructured":"Ibid."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r74","unstructured":"Penna, op. cit. (note 20), 150."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r72","unstructured":"Agote and Medina, op. cit. (note 14), 99."},{"key":"#cr-split#-S0025727318000376_r70.1","unstructured":"20. William Coleman, Yellow Fever in the North: The Methods of Early Epidemiology (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987)"},{"key":"#cr-split#-S0025727318000376_r70.2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"21. Margaret Humphreys, Yellow Fever and the South (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999).","DOI":"10.56021\/9780801861963"},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r68","unstructured":"Malbran, op. cit. (note 57)."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r67","unstructured":"Ibid., 215."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r64","first-page":"423","article-title":"La Peste durante esos ultimos anos. Sintomas \u2013 Marcha \u2013 Diagnostico","volume":"6","author":"Netter","year":"1899","journal-title":"La Semana Medica"},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r63","first-page":"80","article-title":"La Propagation de La Peste","volume":"62","author":"Simond","year":"1898","journal-title":"Annales de l\u2019Institut Pasteur"},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r60","first-page":"91","article-title":"La Peste Del Rosario","volume":"7","author":"Malbran","year":"1900","journal-title":"La Semana Medica"},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r59","unstructured":"Agote and Medina, op. cit. (note 14), 101."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r53","unstructured":"Alvarez, op. cit. (note 13)."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r50","unstructured":"Penna, op. cit. (note 20), 72."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r48","unstructured":"Rodr\u00edguez, op. cit. (note 24), 177 f."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r46","unstructured":"Ibid."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r45","unstructured":"Ibid., 95."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r43","volume-title":"The Pasteurization of France","author":"Latour","year":"1988"},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r41","unstructured":"Ibid., 94."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r40","unstructured":"Ibid., 92."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r38","unstructured":"Penna, op. cit. (note 20), 55."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r35","unstructured":"Armus, op.cit. (note 9), 116."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r34","unstructured":"Armus, op. cit. (note 13), 119."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r32","unstructured":"Ruggiero, op. cit. (note 8), 87 ff."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r29","unstructured":"Ruggiero, op. cit. (note 8), 90."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r26","unstructured":"Meik, op. cit. (note 13), 25."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r24","volume-title":"Civilizing Argentina: Science, Medicine, and the Modern State","author":"Rodr\u00edguez","year":"2006"},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r23","unstructured":"Ruggiero, op. cit. (note 8)."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r22","unstructured":"Armus, op. cit. (note 13)."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r21","unstructured":"Kohl, op. cit. (note 8), 44."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r17","volume-title":"The Principle of Hope","author":"Bloch","year":"1995"},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r16","unstructured":"Ibid., 45."},{"key":"#cr-split#-S0025727318000376_r14.1","unstructured":"42. Luis Agote and A.J. Medina, La Peste Bubonique dans la R??publique Argentine et au Paraguay: ??pid??mies de 1899-1900 (Buenos Aires: F. Lajouane, 1901)"},{"key":"#cr-split#-S0025727318000376_r14.2","unstructured":"43. Myron J. Echenberg, Plague Ports: The Global Urban Impact of Bubonic Plague, 1894-1901 (New York: New York University Press, 2007)."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r12","unstructured":"Alvarez, ibid., 299."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","DOI":"10.1515\/9781580468893","volume-title":"Intrusive Interventions: Public Health, Domestic Space and Infectious Disease Surveillance in England, 1840\u20131914","author":"Mooney","year":"2015"},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r9","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Anne Hardy, The Epidemic Streets: Infectious Disease and the Rise of Preventive Medicine, 1856\u20131900 (Wotton-under-Edge: Clarendon Press, 1993). Diego Armus, \u2018Utopias Higienicas\/Utopias Urbanas. Buenos Aires 1920\u2019, in Heffes, Gisela (ed.), Utopias Urbanas: Geopoliticos Del Deseo En America Latina (Frankfurt\/Madrid: Verveurt, 2013), 115\u201330.","DOI":"10.31819\/9783954870745-006"},{"key":"#cr-split#-S0025727318000376_r8.1","unstructured":"46. Alejandro Kohl, Higienismo Argentino: Historia de una Utop??a. La salud en el Imaginario Colectivo de una ??poca (Buenos Aires: Editorial Dunken, 2006)"},{"key":"#cr-split#-S0025727318000376_r8.2","unstructured":"47. Kristin Ruggiero, Modernity in the Flesh: Medicine, Law, and Society in Turn-of-the-Century Argentina (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004)"},{"key":"#cr-split#-S0025727318000376_r8.3","unstructured":"48. Norma Isabel S??nchez and Alfredo G. Kohn Loncarica, La Higiene y los Higienistas en la Argentina: 1880-1943 (Buenos Aires: Sociedad Cient??fica Argentina, 2007)."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r27","unstructured":"Alvarez and Carbonetti, op. cit. (note 13), 62."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Jaime Larry Benchimol, Dos Micr\u00f3bios aos Mosquitos: Febre Amarela e a Revolu\u00e7\u00e3o Pasteuriana no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: SciELO - Editora FIOCRUZ, 1999), 259 ff.","DOI":"10.7476\/9788575413166"},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r6","first-page":"12","article-title":"Between the Carlo R. and the Orleannais: Public Health and Maritime Prophylaxis in the Description of Two Cases of Ships Transporting Immigrants Arriving in the Port of Rio de Janeiro, 1893\u20131907","volume":"20","author":"Rebelo","year":"2013","journal-title":"Hist\u00f3ria, Ci\u00eancias, Sa\u00fade-Manguinhos"},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r5","first-page":"183","article-title":"A Atua\u00e7\u00e3o de Oswaldo Cruz no aparecimento da Peste Bubonica no Brasil","volume":"54","author":"Guilherme Lacorte","year":"1967","journal-title":"A Folha Medica"},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1017\/CBO9781139152174"},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r1","unstructured":"As a history pertinent to the peculiar space of urban modernity that developed in Buenos Aires at the turn of the twentieth century, this local case requires also differentiation from health transformation affecting the nation of Argentina and very different trajectories experienced at the same time in rural communities. See Mar\u00eda Silvia Di Liscia, \u2018Del brazo civilizador a la defensa nacional: pol\u00edticas sanitarias, atenci\u00f3n m\u00e9dica y poblaci\u00f3n rural (Argentina, 1900\u201330)\u2019, Historia Caribe, 12, 31 (2017), 159\u201393."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r102","unstructured":"Echenberg, op. cit. (note 14)."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r104","unstructured":"Armus, op. cit. (note 9), 125."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r55","unstructured":"Echenberg, op. cit. (note 14), 137."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r51","unstructured":"Ibid."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r56","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1177\/0963662512473212"},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r71","first-page":"18","volume-title":"Louisiana State Board of Health: The Progressive Years","author":"Gillson","year":"1976"},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r96","first-page":"7","article-title":"Saneamiento de La Ciudad Buenos Aires. Deratizacion","volume":"18","author":"Rivero","year":"1911","journal-title":"La Semana Medica"},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r79","unstructured":"Kohl, op. cit. (note 8), 73."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r103","unstructured":"Ministerio del Interior, Departamento Nacional de Higiene (ed.), Tecnica Teorico-Practica de La Desinfeccion (Buenos Aires: Guillermo Kraft, 1912)."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r66","unstructured":"Agote and Medina, op. cit. (note 14), 211."},{"key":"#cr-split#-S0025727318000376_r11.1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"59. Adriana Alvarez, 'Resignificando Los Conceptos de La Higiene: El Surgimiento de una Autoridad Sanitaria en el Buenos Aires de los A??os 80', Hist??ria, Ci??ncias, Sa??de-Manguinhos, 6, 2 (1999), 293-314","DOI":"10.1590\/S0104-59701999000300004"},{"key":"#cr-split#-S0025727318000376_r11.2","unstructured":"60. Susana Belmartino, La atenci??n m??dica argentina en el siglo XX: instituciones y procesos (Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno Editores Argentina, 2005)."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r62","unstructured":"Agote and Medina, op. cit. (note 14), 77."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r18","first-page":"14","article-title":"Educated Hope: Ernst Bloch on Abstract and Concrete Utopia","volume":"1","author":"Levitas","year":"1990","journal-title":"Utopian Studies"},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r25","unstructured":"Ibid., 41."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r65","first-page":"429","article-title":"La Fiebre Bubonica. Mecanismo del contagio","volume":"6","author":"Decoud","year":"1899","journal-title":"La Semana Medica"},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r75","unstructured":"Ibid., 142."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r20","volume-title":"La Administraci\u00f3n Sanitaria y Asistencia P\u00fablica de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires","author":"Penna","year":"1910"},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r57","unstructured":"Carlos Malbran, Apuntes sobre Salud Publica (Buenos Aires: n.a., 1931)."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r28","unstructured":"Cueto and Palmer, op. cit. (note 2), 76."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r87","unstructured":"Ibid., 170."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r19","unstructured":"One of the many photographs of the Aparato Marot in Buenos Aires is included in the paper (see Figure\u00a03), despite the fact that it\u2019s archival provenance remains vague and there are currently no further indicators as to the circumstances under which pictures like this have been taken, what they were used for and to what kind of reception they were exposed. However, they serve as a support for the tangential argument that the machines were a spectacular demonstration of the authority\u2019s efforts to sanitise the city."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r61","unstructured":"Echenberg, op. cit. (note 14), 143."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r49","unstructured":"Meik, op. cit. (note 13), 121."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r37","unstructured":"Kohl, op. cit. (note 8), 72."},{"key":"#cr-split#-S0025727318000376_r3.1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"71. Diego Armus, 'Disease in the historiography of modern Latin America', in Diego Armus (ed.), Disease in the History of Modern Latin America: From Malaria to AIDS (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 13","DOI":"10.1215\/9780822384342-001"},{"key":"#cr-split#-S0025727318000376_r3.2","unstructured":"72. Marcos Cueto, The Value of Health: A History of the Pan American Health Organization (Washington DC: Pan American Health Organization, 2007)."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r36","unstructured":"Echenberg, op. cit. (note 14), 136."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r101","unstructured":"Benchimol, op. cit. (note 7). J.J. Kinyoun, \u2018The Prophylaxis of Plague\u2019, Journal of the American Medical Association, XLII, 4 (1904), 232\u20139."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r13","unstructured":"Many scholars have emphasised that the modernisation of Buenos Aires, and especially of the impoverished parts of the capital, saw fear of infection, unhygienic living conditions and the state of morality addressed as deeply associated issues. See: Diego Armus, \u2018El Descubrimiento de La Enfermedad Como Problem Social\u2019, in Mirta Zaida Lobato (ed.), El Progreso, La Modernizaci\u00f3n y Sus L\u00edmites (1880\u20131916) (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 2002), 515; Alvarez, op. cit. (note 11); Belmartino, op. cit. (note 11); Adriana Alvarez and Adri\u00e1n Carbonetti, Saberes y pr\u00e1cticas m\u00e9dicas en la Argentina: un recorrido por historias de vida (Buenos Aires: EUDEM, 2008); Diego Armus, The Ailing City: Health, Tuberculosis, and Culture in Buenos Aires, 1870\u20131950 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011); Kindon Thomas Meik, \u2018Disease and Hygiene in the Construction of a Nation: The Public Sphere, Public Space, and the Private Domain in Buenos Aires, 1871\u20131910\u2019(unpublished PhD thesis: Florida International University, 2011)."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r44","unstructured":"Penna, op. cit. (note 20), 165."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r33","unstructured":"Meik, op. cit. (note 13), 111."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r84","unstructured":"There were a number of competing machines in place at the time. A comprehensive comparison of the machines in their functionality, efficiency and economic values is given by J. Chaine in 1932: J. Chaine, \u2018Raport sur la destruction des rats\u2019, Deuxi\u00e8me Conf\u00e9rence internationale et congr\u00e8s colonial du rat et de la peste: Paris, 7\u201312 octobre 1931\/documents r\u00e9unis et publi\u00e9s par\u2026\u00a0Gabriel Petit (Paris: Vigot, 1932), 453\u2013463."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r94","unstructured":"Ministerio de Guerra, Inspeccion General de Sanidad, Instrucciones sobre Profilaxia Humana Y Desinfeccion Para el Ejercito Argentino (Buenos Aires: Guillermo Kraft, 1908), 9."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r42","volume-title":"Spreading Germs: Disease Theories and Medical Practice in Britain, 1865\u20131900","author":"Worboys","year":"2000"},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"5","DOI":"10.2307\/j.ctv16759s7","volume-title":"Medicine and Nation Building in the Americas, 1890\u20131940","author":"Amador","year":"2015"},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r95","unstructured":"Ibid., 49."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r98","unstructured":"Penna, op. cit. (note 20), 119."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r54","unstructured":"Agote and Medina, op. cit. (note 14), 105."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r80","unstructured":"Penna, op. cit. (note 20), 159."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r52","unstructured":"Ibid."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r31","unstructured":"Ibid., 183."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r39","unstructured":"Ibid. [All quotes from Penna in this article are the author\u2019s translation.]"},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r99","unstructured":"Amador, op. cit. (note 4), 8."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r58","unstructured":"Anon., \u2018Otra vez la peste del Paraguay y el Departemento Nacional de Higiene\u2019, La Semana Medica, 7, 26 (1900), 388."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r15","unstructured":"Kohl, op. cit. (note 8)."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r69","unstructured":"Malbran, op. cit. (note 60), 25 f."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r30","unstructured":"Rodr\u00edguez, op. cit. (note 24), 42."},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r73","first-page":"420","article-title":"Consideraciones sobre la etiologia de la peste","volume":"8","author":"Penna","year":"1901","journal-title":"La Semana Medica"},{"key":"S0025727318000376_r47","unstructured":"Armus, op. cit. (note 13), 533."}],"container-title":["Medical History"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/services\/aop-cambridge-core\/content\/view\/S0025727318000376","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2024,7,7]],"date-time":"2024-07-07T11:27:33Z","timestamp":1720351653000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/product\/identifier\/S0025727318000376\/type\/journal_article"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2018,6,11]]},"references-count":111,"journal-issue":{"issue":"3","published-print":{"date-parts":[[2018,7]]}},"alternative-id":["S0025727318000376"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1017\/mdh.2018.37","relation":{},"ISSN":["0025-7273","2048-8343"],"issn-type":[{"value":"0025-7273","type":"print"},{"value":"2048-8343","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2018,6,11]]},"assertion":[{"value":"\u00a9 The Author 2018. Published by Cambridge University Press.\u00a0","name":"license","label":"License","group":{"name":"copyright_and_licensing","label":"Copyright and Licensing"}}]}}