Clostridium botulinum was named because of association with “sausage poisoning”

Editor—I wish to add some mustard to Aronson's recent diet of sausages1 by suggesting that the bacterium Clostridium botulinum is indeed so called because of its pathological association with the delicatessen in question and not (as Aronson says) because of its shape. In 1793, 13 people in Wildbad, Germany, became ill after sharing a large sausage; six of them died. 2 Not long after this, Justinus Kerner, a district health officer in southern Germany, recognised the connection between sausage and a paralytic illness affecting 230 patients. He made “sausage poisoning,” or botulism as it came to be known, a notifiable disease.3 It wasn't until 1897 that van Ermengen published the first description of the causative organism and showed the production of a toxin (later identified as type B) that induced weakness in animals.4 As far as I know, this account is accurate and free of boloney.