Gaeta Raffaele, Fornaciari Antonio, Giuffra Valentina
Division of Paleopathology, Department of Translational Research and of New Technologies in Medicine and Surgery, University of Pisa, Via Roma 57, 56126 Pisa, Italy. E-mail:
Division of Paleopathology, Department of Translational Research and of New Technologies in Medicine and Surgery, University of Pisa, Italy
Acta Med Hist Adriat. 2020 Jun 29;18(1):47-62. doi: 10.31952/amha.18.1.3.
The Spanish flu pandemic spread in 1918-19 and infected about 500 million people, killing 50 to 100 million of them. People were suffering from severe poverty and malnutrition, especially in Europe, due to the First World War, and this contributed to the diffusion of the disease. In Italy, Spanish flu appeared in April 1918 with several cases of pulmonary congestion and bronchopneumonia; at the end of the epidemic, about 450.000 people died, causing one of the highest mortality rates in Europe. From the archive documents and the autoptic registers of the Hospital of Pisa, we can express some considerations on the impact of the pandemic on the population of the city and obtain some information about the deceased. In the original necroscopic registers, 43 autopsies were reported with the diagnosis of grippe (i.e. Spanish flu), of which the most occurred from September to December 1918. Most of the dead were young individuals, more than half were soldiers, and all of them showed confluent hemor agic lung bronchopneumonia, which was the typical feature of the pandemic flu. We believe that the study of the autopsy registers represents an incomparable instrument for the History of Medicine and a useful resource to understand the origin and the evolution of the diseases.
西班牙大流感疫情于1918年至1919年蔓延，感染了约5亿人，其中5000万至1亿人死亡。由于第一次世界大战，人们正遭受严重的贫困和营养不良，尤其是在欧洲，这促使了疾病的传播。在意大利，西班牙大流感于1918年4月出现，有几例肺充血和支气管肺炎病例；疫情结束时，约45万人死亡，导致欧洲最高死亡率之一。从比萨医院的档案文件和尸检记录中,我们可以对这场大流行对该市人口的影响提出一些看法，并获得一些关于死者的信息。在原始的尸检记录中，有43例尸检报告诊断为流感（即西班牙大流感），其中大部分发生在1918年9月至12月。大多数死者是年轻人，一半以上是士兵，他们都表现出融合性出血性肺支气管肺炎，这是大流行流感的典型特征。我们认为，对尸检记录的研究是医学史上无与伦比的工具，也是了解疾病起源和演变的有用资源。
