Dengue fever in the Corpus Hippocraticum

Dengue fever (DF) is a globally significant infection which causes a range of severe and non-severe clinical manifestations. It is transmitted by mosquitoes of the Aedes genus (primarily Aedes aegypti, but also Aedes albopictus). In this letter, a possible DF epidemic on Thasos Island in Greece, which is described in the Book of Epidemics I of the Corpus Hippocraticum, is presented and analyzed. To my knowledge, it is the first report of DF in the history of medicine.