ABSTRACT
After a massive earthquake hit San Francisco in 1906, a new bacterial species was found in ground squirrels. The bacterium was named Bacterium tularense after the California county where the discovery was made-Tulare County. Tularemia was rst described as a human disease during 1911 in Utah, where it was called deery fever. In 1919, Edward Francis linked the two by isolating B. tularense from the blood of patients with deery fever. Hence, the disease was named tularemia after the pathogen, and the bacterium itself was renamed Francisella tularensis in honor of Edward Francis. Other names for tularemia include rabbit fever, Ohara fever, and Francis fever.
