History of the study of tularemia: from Astrakhan "pestis ambulans" to a ubiquitous independent nosological form

To date, the legitimacy of the existence of tularemia as a separate nosological form does not raise any doubts, because the causative agent and clinical manifestations of this disease are well studied. However, this diagnosis is only slightly more than 100 years old. Already at the end of the 19th century, practicing physicians began to recognize the existence of a more or less independent form within the framework of such a well-known disease as plague (plague infection of weak strength according to S.P. Botkin, pestis ambulans, pestis nostras, peste frustre, etc.), characterized by a relatively mild course and, at least, little contagiousness or no transmission from person to person at all.  The causative agent of this disease was isolated by American researchers McCoy G.W. and Chapin, C.W. only in 1911 (an article on this discovery was published in 1912) from California ground squirrels ("earth squirrels") in the study of a "plague-like disease" in these rodents in the area of Lake Tulyare. According to the place where the microorganism was detected, the discoverers named it Bacterium tularense. The connection of this pathogen with human diseases accompanied by intoxication syndrome and lymphadenopathy was also established by the American physician and researcher E. Francis in 1921, giving the disease the name "Tularemia". In other words, the usual order of studying a particular infectious disease in the case of Tularemia went in the opposite order: not from the clinical picture to the search for its cause, but from the causative agent to the characteristics of the clinic it caused.  In Japan, tularemia was originally described in 1924-25.  H. ohara under the name "Yatobyo" (yato - wild rabbits, byo-disease), but by 1925 its identity was established as tularemia. In 1926, the diagnosis of tularemia was first announced and later won recognition in the USSR.  Subsequently, cases of tularemia were described in almost all countries (except South America), and the causative agent in 1947 was quite justifiably renamed Francisella tularensis.