Explore the recorded discovery and history of Clostridium tetani, with source links and stated limits.
PHAC describes C. tetani as a motile, anaerobic, spore-forming bacterium whose vegetative cells are rod shaped, pleomorphic and occur in pairs or short chains, with terminal spores giving a drumstick appearance; it appears Gram-positive in young cultures and becomes Gram-negative on sporulation. It produces tetanospasmin, a potent neurotoxin. CDC states that tetanus bacteria can get into someone’s body through broken skin, usually through injuries, and that symptoms appear between 3 and 21 days, averaging 8 days, after exposure. PHAC records that transmission occurs through contamination of wounds with soil or foreign bodies carrying spores and that the disease is not directly transmitted from person to person.
LPSN records the basonym “Bacillus tetani” Flügge 1886. The epithet comes from the Latin and Greek for tension or tetanus, naming the organism after the muscular rigidity of the disease rather than after any feature of the cell.
LPSN records Clostridium tetani (Flügge 1886) Bergey et al. 1923, effectively published in the first edition of Bergey’s Manual of Determinative Bacteriology, and retained on the 1980 Approved Lists of Bacterial Names. Type strain ATCC 19406 / NCTC 279.
These references do not identify a first person ever infected. Tetanus was described as a clinical syndrome long before the organism was isolated, and because the disease is not transmitted between people there is no chain of transmission to trace back to an index case.
Source check: 2026-09-20. Educational content; independent scientific review remains pending.