The 1923 Article of Bacteriologist Osman Serafeddin Related to Spanish Flu

Abstract

Pandemic illnesses have been remarkably influent and significant to determine the flow of human history. It can never be guaranteed that today’s rapidly-globalizing world communities and next generations will not suffer from these illnesses as in the past. Therefore, it is extremely valuable to know all the realities about the pandemics in detail and to derive lessons from these outbreaks and to provide solutions accordingly. We aimed at bringing a noteworthy article which evaluated the cases of 1918-1919 pandemic, the most well-known influenza pandemic of the history. The article written by Dr. Osman Serafeddin in 1918 was issued in 1923 in the medical journal of Istanbul Seririyyati (clinics), volume 1, issue 12, and in 263 to 266. In this article, Dr. Osman Serafeddin made clinical and anatomopathological comments on the cases who lost their lives due to influenza. The 1918 pandemic, known as Spanish flu, has still attracted epidemiologists’ interest, and is seen worth-research and preserves its mystery due to its features like starting in the northern hemisphere in summer, the extremely high dissemination velocity in proportion to the other pandemics, and the differences in mortality among various societies. Even in the articles issued recently, this pandemic still preserves its mystery. We wish our study be helpful to the epidemiologists in the reinterpretation of the crossword puzzle, which the abovementioned pandemic constituted and which has been unresolved.

Keywords

• Spanish flu
• Turkey
• history