The aim of the article is to determine when and which Polish newspapers published the first reports on the outbreak of the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918, and what Polish readers could learn about the new health crisis and disease from the press articles. The research material selection process consisted of three stages. The analysis showed that most of the initial reports were short and characterised by ambivalent undertones. They did not contain, among other things, information about the symptoms of the new disease, but provided valuable information about the scale of the crisis, its location, and consequences. The Authors used content analysis (quantitative and qualitative) as a research method.