Gioeni's Academy in the time of the "Spanish flu"

Abstract

The critical analysis here undertaken deals with the attention devoted to "Spanish flu", broken out at the beginning of the Twentieth Century as an influenza disease, by the associates of Gioeni's Academy in the Sicilian city of Catania. The great pandemic of the pulmonary infection, according to the scholars was defined as "one of the greatest enemies of man". However, the characteristics the etiological agent, the social care systems as well as sanitary remedial actions in the autumn of 1918, when outbreaks occurred, surprisingly, were little examined and discussed in the academic meetings and even in publications appeared in two scientific journals edited by Gioeni's Academy.