• DOI:10.1016/S0140-6736(97)01438-4
• Corpus ID: 26567729

Hong Kong, 1894: the role of James A Lowson in the controversial discovery of the plague bacillus

@article{Solomon1997HongK1,
  title={Hong Kong, 1894: the role of James A Lowson in the controversial discovery of the plague bacillus},
  author={Tom Solomon},
  journal={The Lancet},
  year={1997},
  volume={350},
  pages={59-62}
}

• T. Solomon
• Published 5 July 1997
• Medicine
• The Lancet

That the plague bacillus Yersinia pestis is named after Alexandre Yersin is well known. However, it is less well known that it was many years before he received full credit for his discovery. During the Hong Kong plague epidemic of 1894, when rival French and Japanese teams were investigating the cause of the disease, it was Shibasaburo Kitasato who first claimed to have identified the pathogen. Kitasato published his work in The Lancet and was credited with the discovery for many years. Subsequently, the bacillus became known as the KitasatoYersin bacillus, but in more recent years Yersin has received sole recognition for the renamed Yersinia pestis. At the centre of the events during the Hong Kong epidemic was a 28-year-old Scottish doctor, James Alfred Lowson (figure 1). As acting superintendent of the Civil Hospital, he diagnosed the first cases and was responsible for cooperation with the investigating teams. Lowson was born on July 1, 1866, in Forfar, Scotland, graduated from Edinburgh University in 1888, and soon after left for Hong Kong. His diary has recently been released to the Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences. Hastily written entries, with notes added in later years, give a new insight into this important landmark in infectious disease. In this article, I review the controversial discovery of the plague bacillus, and reconsider Lowson’s role in the light of the new evidence.