ABSTRACT
The most notorious species, Yersinia pestis, is the causative agent of plague, which is one of the oldest recorded infectious diseases. The genus name Yersinia was coined by van Loghem in 1944 in honor of the French bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin who, in 1894, first isolated the causative agent of plague, "Pasteurella pestis". In cases of primary septicemic plague, buboes may be absent, leading to clinical misdiagnosis. Persons with either the primary or secondary form of pneumonic plague are very contagious and can easily spread the infection from person to person via aerosols. Pneumonic plague is rapidly fatal, which makes rapid diagnosis critical. Plague meningitis is a rare complication of infection that occurs as acute early disease or as a result of inadequate treatment for bubonic plague. Gastrointestinal infections caused by Y. enterocolitica are associated with consuming contaminated food or water.
