| Sažetak (engleski) | At the end of the 18th century, an epidemic of allegedly unknown disease characterized by inconsistent symptoms
broke up in Istria, Croatia. The disease was called
Škrljevo disease
after the village Škrljevo, near Rijeka, where it first
emerged. We critically evaluated archive material, books, and papers on this disease published during the last 200
years. According to these records, the “illness” spread quite rapidly, affecting around 13,000 people at its peak around
the mid-19th century. Dozens of papers, books, and dissertations were written, trying to elucidate the nature and cause
of the “epidemic.” By the end of the 19th century, the “disease” had mostly disappeared, but the questions it had raised
did not. We believe that this “disease” was not a real epidemic, but actually the rise (and fall) of a “fashionable diagno
-
sis”. We recognized certain similarities in ethical and popular aspects between the story of the Škrljevo disease and ac
-
quired immunodeficiency syndrome. |
