The word "emphysema" is derived from the Greek emphysan meaning "inflate" -itself composed of ἐν en, meaning "in", and φυσᾶν physan, meaning "breath, blast [REF].
In 1953, Dr. George L. Waldbott, an American allergist, first described a new disease he named "smoker's respiratory syndrome" in the 1953 Journal of the American Medical Association.