Salmonella
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A genus of bacteria belonging to the family of Enterobacteriaceae. A group of gram negative, usually motile, rods. More than 1400 species have been classified. Several species are pathogenic, some producing mild gastroenteritis, others producing a severe and often fatal food poisoning, which is called Salmonellosis.
The Salmonella group previously was also called the TPE group, the so-called typhus-parathyphus-enteritis group, or para-typhoid bacilli. It comprises the typhus bacillus, Salmonella typhi, previously called Eberthella typhi for the German bacteriologist Karl Joseph Eberth (1835-1926), and Shigella dysenteria, a bacillus causing a form of dysentery, named for the Japanese bacteriologist Kiyoshi Shiga (1871-1957).
The Salmonella bacterium a was first described by Theobald Smith (1859-1934) and Salmon in 1885 in a strain isolated from pigs with hog cholera, in the paper Investigations on Swine Plague, published in the Second Annual Report of Bureau of Animal Industry. Salmon termed it Hog-cholerabacillus. It is now called Salmonella cholera suis, but is not the real cause of swine plague, which is a viral disease. Salmonella was first discovered by Theobald Smith.
It was the French bacteriologist Joseph Léon Marcel Ligniéres (1868-1933) who, in 1900, suggested that the entire group of bacteria to which the swine pest bacillus belongs, should be termed Salmonella in honour of Salmon.
Species often found to be the cause of septicaemia.
Species causing gastroenteritis and food poisoning in man.
A group of Salmonella, types A, B, and C, that causes parathyphoid fever.
Species causing paratyphoid fever, type B.
(Hugo Schottmüller, German physician and bacteriologist, 1867-1936)
Species frequently isolated from persons with acute gastroenteritis.
Species causing typhoid fever in man.
Bibliography
- D. E. Salmon, T. Smith:
The bacterium of swine-plague.
American Monthly Microscopical Journal, 1886, 7: 204-205.
Discovery of Salmonella cholerae-suis.