In 1854, the Italian anatomist
Filippo Pacini coined the term "vibrions" in a paper he published during the
third Cholera pandemic arguing that they were the main agents causing cholera. He drew his conclusion from his observations of the thin, wormlike bacteria present in the blood and stool of cholera patients, especially characteristic of late-stage infections. The
Vibrio cholerae identified by Pacini were rediscovered by
Robert Koch in 1884, who was unaware of Pacini's work; he called them “Comma Bacillus” and received worldwide fame as a result of his discovery. The term “vibrion” was subsequently used by
Louis Pasteur in 1861 in naming a bacterium he discovered,
Vibryon butyrique, which was capable of surviving in an environment without oxygen. This bacterium was then identified as the same bacterium which had been discovered by two other scientists and renamed
Clostridium butyricum. In an issue of the journal
Modern Medicine from 1893, the term "cholera vibrion" is used to refer to
Vibrio cholerae. In the same journal from 1893, the term "vibrion" is said to be dated, which highlights the brevity of the time period in which the word was used. The term "vibrion" was out of use by the late 1920s and does not appear on its own in subsequent biological literature. This is largely due to the more extensive development of
bacterial taxonomy towards the turn of the 19th century, which gave
bacteriologists a more specific way to classify microorganisms. The term "vibrion" was adapted into the name of the
Vibrio prokaryotic genus. == References ==