Francisco Gavaldá, adelantado en el estudio social y estadístico sobre la peste (1679)

Abstract

In 1651, Francisco Gavaldá (1618-1686) authored the first social statistics study on the bubonic plague which scourged western Europe in the mid-seventeenth century, specifically the plague having racked Valencia in 1647. Gavaldá was, in fact the first to study the plague not only statistically, but also from a social standpoint, denouncing the fact that it especially affected the poor, totally independently of the interests of the powerful.