From the history of medicine                                                         

UDC: 616.927-036.22

doi:10.5633/amm.2012.0312s

 

 

TYPHUS IN SERBIA IN THE SECOND SERBIAN-TURKISH WAR 1877/8

 

Goran Čukić

Health Care Center Berane, Montenegro

 

 

The occurrence of typhus in Serbia, during the gathering of soldiers in barracks between 1836 and 1864, made us search its appearance in the Serbian wars. In the Second Serbian-Turkish War, doctors’ reports showed that a lot of them had noticed massive appearance of typhus. That is contrary to the opinions of Djordjevic, Stanojevic and other doctors who denied the existence of typhus in that war. Collected data from informational material, books, magazines, newspapers, were analyzed. We had an insight into the archive material from 1879. The following facts were our arguments: identification of disease, clinical signs and symptoms of typhus, its complications, epidemiologic characteristics and others, which all together indicated that there was a possibility for diagnosing the “war typhus”. The established diagnosis was at the level of “nonentity”. Epidemic in Serbia is associated with the period of the Ottoman rule as the disease appeared in the areas liberated from the Turks. The first year after the war, in 1879, the “war typhus” spread among soldiers, but also among civilians who caught the disease from soldiers on leave. Acta Medica Medianae 2012;51(3):67-74.

 

Ključne reči: typhus exanthematicus, war typhus, endemic of typhus, Serbian military medical corps, Second Serbian-Turkish War, military medical statistics