ABSTRACT
The arrival of large numbers of immigrants and migrants challenged the Buenos Aires municipal government. A comparative analysis of the populations and public health policies of Buenos Aires and Philadelphia demonstrates the similarities of and the differences between their efforts to prevent tuberculosis. The working poor—among them African Americans in Philadelphia and recent immigrants in Buenos Aires—encountered middle-class prejudices in seeking to obtain treatment. Public health officials also believed that tuberculosis could be overcome only by improving the living and working conditions of the lower classes and conquering both physical and moral contagion. The diverse ethnicities and large numbers of immigrants in both Buenos Aires and Philadelphia added to the public health concerns. In spite of their growing economic power, Italian immigrants rarely participated directly in the political system. In 1852, Spanish immigrants published their first newspaper and established their first social club. Immigrants from Eastern Europe and Russia comprised over eighty percent of the total Jewish population.
