Scientific heroism of a military microbiologist: to the 50th anniversary of self-inoculation with Y. pseudotuberculosis

Abstract

For almost 80 years since the discovery of Y. pseudotuberculosis, the causative agent of pseudotuberculosis, the disease was considered a zoonosis. Cases of human infection were very rare and usually lethal. In the middle of XX century, cases of human pseudotuberculosis with involvement of mesenteric lymph nodes and symptoms of acute appendicitis were described in Europe. Since 1959, annual epidemic outbreaks of a new infectious disease have been reported in the Far East of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics among individuals in organized groups, who consumed the same type of food. The disease was called «Far Eastern scarlet-fever-like fever», but its causative agent was not known. In 1966, a naval microbiologist V. Znamensky for the first time in the world isolated Y. pseudotuberculosis from feces of such a patient. However, scientific leaders of that time were not convinced by this finding of a provincial microbiologist. To provide a direct evidence that the microbe is a cause of the scarlet-like fever, in January 1967, V. Znamensky self-inoculated Yersinia culture isolated from a patient. Six days later, he developed a severe septic form of scarlet-like fever and was hospitalized to the Military Medical Academy, where he was examined and successfully treated.

Keywords

pseudotuberculosis / Far Eastern scarlet-fever-like fever / Znamensky / self-inoculation / Yersinia pseudotuberculosis / mesenteric lymph nodes / bacteriologist

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