In other words, are there any historical cases of what we now call AIDS showing up before AIDS was actually identified?
Not a historian but a biologist. Short answer is no, SIV did not give rise to HIV until the late 19th/early 20th century.
Edit: If you google the article name and author and then click on the top google result it skips past the paywall for some reason
The first confirmed case of an aids death occurred in 1969. A 16 year old American boy from Missouri.
Thank you for the answers!
Wasn't there a major outbreak of a type of pneumonia that highly correlates to HIV in the 1950s in eastern Europe? I cannot recall any more specifics, and would like to know if anyone is familiar with this case.
*Edit: Spoiler: this is from Malcolm Gladwell, who claims in the Tipping Point that an AIDS researcher discovered a major outbreak of PCP in the Dutch province of Limburg, which would possibly indicate an early strain or mutation of AIDS. Is there any substance to this? To what extent is this idea accepted within the broader AIDS research community?
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/g/gladwell-tipping.html