Scientists at the Institut Pasteur and its International Network, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (Cambridge, United Kingdom) and several international institutions have just published an exceptionally wide-ranging study tracing the history of the bacillus responsible for epidemic dysentery – one of the worst scourges to afflict humans throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. This vast scientific investigation has uncovered hitherto unknown links between the various outbreaks that have occurred through history.
