Special prevention of spotted typhoid fever in the Serbian military medical service in 1915: Contribution of dr Subbotić

Abstract

At the beginning of the 20th century there were scientific unknowns regarding the spotted typhoid fever, that were still present at the beginning of the Great War, and in 1915, serious endeavours were invested in resolving them. Putting trust in the experiments by prof. Charles Nicolle, it was assumed that the spotted typhoid was a transmissible disease in humans, and not just in experimental animals. Therefore, Dr Genčić felt that it was possible to contain the epidemic of this disease by using factory autoclaves and depediculating the healthy as well, and not only those already infected with this disease. Dr Subbotić solved the problem of the unavailability of these devices on the market by improvising - building the so-called "dug-in oven". By innovating on this design, Eng. Vulović achieved a more perfect form - a "central disinfection station". The effectiveness of this innovation was not evaluated at the time, which is one of the reasons why Serbian successes in this field were disclosed post festum. It is believed that Dr Subbotić wanted to point out this contribution of the Serbian medical community by his participation in Paris in 1916 and London in 1917. As a participant in the events of 1915, he also took on the role of a medical historian but presented seemingly only "his share in this undertaking", which left out the display of the "central disinfection station". The reasons for this lie in an assumption that this information was classified. Hence, this means of mass depediculation represents a cultural contribution and belongs to global medical history that only came about once the hypothesis that this improvisation can contain the spotted typhoid epidemic had been proven. In Serbia in the period prior to 1945, dry hot air chambers were used and were empirically found to appear efficient, but the scientific significance of the "central disinfection station" and the contribution of Dr Subbotić to this development were not evaluated.