Botulinus
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Botulinus
In 1895 Émile van Ermengem, a Belgian microbiologist, discovered what is now called Clostridium botulinum and confirmed that a toxin produced by the bacteria causes botulism.[90] On 14 December 1895, there was a large outbreak of botulism in the Belgian village of Ellezelles that occurred at a funeral where people ate pickled and smoked ham; three of them died. By examining the contaminated ham and performing autopsies on the people who died after eating it, van Ermengem isolated an anaerobic microorganism that he called Bacillus botulinus.[88] He also performed experiments on animals with ham extracts, isolated bacterial cultures, and toxins extracts from the bacteria. From these he concluded that the bacteria themselves do not cause foodborne botulism, but rather produce a toxin that causes the disease after it is ingested.[91] As a result of Kerner's and van Ermengem's research, it was thought that only contaminated meat or fish could cause botulism. This idea was refuted in 1904 when a botulism outbreak occurred in Darmstadt, Germany, because of canned white beans. In 1910, the German microbiologist J. Leuchs published a paper showing that the outbreaks in Ellezelles and Darmstadt were caused by different strains of Bacillus botulinus and that the toxins were serologically distinct.[88] In 1917, Bacillus botulinus was renamed Clostridium botulinum, as it was decided that term Bacillus should only refer to a group of aerobic microorganisms, while Clostridium would be only used to describe a group of anaerobic microorganisms.[90] In 1919, Georgina Burke used toxin-antitoxin reactions to identify two strains of Clostridium botulinum, which she designated A and B.[90] 59ce067264