The history of Campylobacter

The first description of Campylobacter is believed to have been made in 1886 by Theodore Escherich. He observed and described a non-culturable spiral shaped bacterium, which he found in the colon of children with an enteric disease called “cholera infantum”, he then recognized this bacterial as fast emerging pathogens.

Campylobacter was identified for the first time on February 2, 1906 when two British veterinarians, John McFadyean and Stewart Stockman reported the presence of “large numbers of a peculiar organisms” in Loeffler’s blue-stained smears of uterine mucus of a pregnant ewe.

Campylobacter jejuni is a leading cause of enteritis and enterocolitis, worldwide. Although Theodor Escherich himself provided drawings of campylobacters back in the 1880s, Campylobacter jejuni was not identified until the 1950s.

The genus Campylobacter was first proposed in 1963 by Sebald and Véron, distinguishing them from the “true” Vibrio spp. After that, the study of Butzler raised the interest in Campylobacter by noting their high incidence in human diarrhea.
The history of Campylobacter