Abstract
Descriptions of newly recognized infectious diseases of man and the subsequent isolations and characterizations of the etiological agents have—during the past few decades—been confined largely to diseases caused by viruses. The list of newly described arboviruses grows annually and almost logarithmically; interspersed are other newly isolated and described mammalian viruses and their diseases. However, the discovery nowadays of a previously undescribed bacterium responsible for disease in man, highlighted by the isolation and fairly complete characterization of the etiological agent, is an infrequent occurrence. In fact, no descriptions of isolations of new families of bacterial pathogens of man have been published in the scientific literature available to us within the 25 or more years prior to 1977.
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Balows, A., Brenner, D.J. (1981). The Genus Legionella . In: Starr, M.P., Stolp, H., Trüper, H.G., Balows, A., Schlegel, H.G. (eds) The Prokaryotes. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-13187-9_87
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