The heat-wave of 1911. A largely ignored trend reversal in the Italian and Spanish transition?

Abstract

Meteorological publications and daily news articles of the time described the exceptional heat-wave characterising the summer of 1911, not only in many European but also in non European countries. So in order to understand if the summer of 1911 might be considered "abnormal" also in Italy and Spain, where hot summers are a normal characteristic, we analysed the 1911 death seasonality, its geographical differentiation and mortality rates by age and cause of death differences in these two countries. Our conclusions were that only apparently did Italy and Spain share a similar destiny: the causes of deaths responsible for the increasing mortality rates recorded during the summer of 1911, and the ages affected by the excessive number of deaths, were different. In Spain infants and children were the major victims of the heat wave, with a pattern closer to that recorded in Northern European countries. In Italy, notwithstanding the efforts of the public authorities to keep secret an epidemic, the figures, even if falsified, speak for themselves, showing an age and gender deaths structure for the year 1911 which was probably due to a cholera epidemic. © Belin. Tous droits réservés pour tous pays.