[Mosquito caused death: the yellow fever epidemics in San Juan of Puerto Rico 1804-1805].

At the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, yellow fever epidemics occurred frequently in America and Europe, in the vicinity of the Mediterranean, Atlantic, and Caribbean coasts. There is only brief information available on the 1804-5 epidemic in San Juan, but it shows that mortality in the city was inordinate. Nevertheless, the minutes of the meetings of the Municipal Assembly in this period make no mention of the epidemic, and allude to it only in veiled fashion. In spite of the accumulation of individual tragedies (for example, it is likely that the two daughters of governor Ramón de Castro were among the victims), the documents show little evidence of community reaction to the epidemic, which apparently ceased in mid-1805.