ABSTRACT
In the summer of 1976 following a convention of the American Legion in Philadelphia, USA, a number of attendees fell ill with a febrile disease that progressed into a fulminate pneumonia. The pneumonia progressed rapidly and did not respond to normal chemotherapy. Over the course of a relatively short time, a number of the individuals who attended the meeting succumbed to the infection. As a result of the number of individuals who became ill and their common attendance at the convention, investigators at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, USA, began an investigation to identify the causative agent (Fraser et al., 1977). Following a number of fortuitous experiments, the
causative agent of the Philadelphia disease was identified as a Gram-negative bacillus that was exceptionally fastidious in its nutritional requirements in the laboratory (McDade et al., 1977). The name Legionella pneumophila was adopted for this previously undescribed organism (Brenner et al., 1979).
