[Diseases of hunger: Mexico 1915].

1915 was a terrible year for Mexican people. After dictator Huerta’s fall, fratricide fighting involved diverse revolutionary groups. Mexico City was assaulted and occupied successively by different armies and, following the war came hunger and epidemics. Many people died from starvation, 30 to 40 every day in July and August. In this paper I review the medical texts written by physicians involved in the treatment of these patients. The main were E. Landa, M. Torroella and F. de P. Miranda and all of them concurred in the observation of important edema increasing to become generalized, important anemia and a watery aspect of the blood, facts that determine the term edema employed to characterize this disease.