This article consists of an analysis written by the French military physician Mathieu François Maxime Audouard, who witnessed the epidemic of yellow fever in Barcelona, in 1821. Audouard held that the slave trade was the main cause of this malady. Although his ideas were controversial and not always accepted by doctors in different parts of the world, they had repercussions on those who supported the end of the slave trade and the movement against slavery in the first half of the 19th century. One particular case for analysis is the reception of his works in Brazil when the international slave trade was abolished in the country, a fact that occurred concomitantly with the outbreak of the great yellow fever epidemic.
Yellow fever; slave trade; history of medicine; Brazil-empire