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| Rifat Frashëri |
At the Congress of Lushnja on January 23, 1920, Prof. Dr. Rifat Frashëri was appointed head of the General Directorate of Albanian Health (the forerunner of a genuine Ministry of Health).
He is known as a renowned scientist and academic in Europe, in Turkish and French Universities. He was a prominent patriot, friend, and close to the Frashëri brothers.
Prof. Dr. Rifat Frashëri was born in 1862, he came from the prominent relatives of Dangëlli Përmeti. After graduating from the high school in Galatasaray and the Faculty of Medicine in Istanbul in 1888, he was appointed a doctor in the military hospital of Shkodra, where he worked until 1897 and showed great professional skills during the smallpox epidemic in Tuz.
In 1897 he returned as a microbiologist to the Istanbul Bacteriological Institute where he collaborated with the French bacteriologist Maurice Nicolle, a specialist at the Pasteur Institute, on the production of the smallpox vaccine. In 1899 he was appointed deputy director and after a few years director of the Istanbul Bacteriological Institute, the capital of the Ottoman Empire.
It was at this time that an in-depth study work and a fruitful collaboration with the French bacteriologist Prof. Paul Remlinger led them to one of the greatest discoveries in world microbiology and medicine of the time, the discovery that rabies in animals and humans was caused by a "filter virus", a discovery that made his name immortal in the history of medicine and world microbiology.
They announced their discovery at a meeting of the Society of Biology (Societe de biologie) in Paris and published it in 1903, in the "Acts" of this association. After the first invention, the Albanian scientist Rifat Frashri was appointed professor at Istanbul University.
In 1903, just 5 years after the discovery of the first virus, the cause of an infectious disease in animals (epizootic virus) by Friedrich Loeffler and Paul Frosch and three years after the discovery of the yellow fever virus, at the Istanbul Bacteriological Institute, Rifat Frashëri and Paul Remlinger discovered the first virus that caused disease in humans and animals, the rabies virus.
The discovery was the result of planned research to substantiate a preliminary hypothesis of the discoverers (on the possibility of the existence of such a causative agent), which arose based on the fact that up to that time this disease was relatively well studied from a clinical point of view. , anatomopathological, microbiological and immunological, it had not been possible to find the cause.
The discovery prompted intensive research to find other viral causes of human infectious diseases. The discoverers Rifat Frashëri and Paul Remlinger along with Walter Reed etc. laid the foundations of medical virology. The discovery was made at the Istanbul Bacteriological Institute. The lack of a scientific standard of the time in this Institute highlights the greatness of the discovery, the knowledge and skills of the discoverers Rifat Frashëri and Paul Remlinger.
With this discovery, Albanian science for the first time in the history of modern science emerges at the forefront of experimental scientific research and gave a leading contribution to the development of microbiology.
The scientist lived with the worries of the motherland, worked long and passionately for the national awakening. At the age of 16 he was appointed secretary of the Assembly gathered in Frashër by Abdyl Frashëri and continuously maintained contacts and collaborated with prominent patriots of the Renaissance, especially with Naim and Sami Frashëri. At the time of his appointment to the university, the professor intensified his national-patriotic activity. He was elected and for a long time was the chairman of the Albanian patriotic organization Union" in Istanbul.
The Albanian scientist despised the request of the Turkish authorities to participate in a commission that would go to Albania to prevent the declaration of independence, openly telling Talhat Pasha (prime minister) that he himself was of Albanian blood and that he would 'encouraged Albanians to declare independence. For this patriotic activity Prof. Dr. Rifat Frashëri, in 1913, was expelled from Istanbul University.
For some time he remained unemployed. He was then sent to a state of semi-internment in Tripoli (Turkey) and later as mayor of that city. After the First World War, he stayed for a short time in Istanbul and in 1920, at the invitation of the Albanian government, he came to Albania and was appointed director general of health, a position he held until he retired.
R. Frashëri's scientific career was interrupted early, due to persecution by the Turkish authorities. Even when he returned to his homeland, he did not find a suitable working condition in the field of microbiology, while his project for an Albanian medical research center remained just a beautiful dream throughout his life.