Mysterious Pneumonia (3)

Legionella.

Legionella pneumonia. It’s also called air-conditioning disease, caused by bacteria that live in air conditioners.

Here, it’s only natural to wonder why Legionella was discovered only in the 1970s. Was this a disease that hadn’t existed before?

Why does it spread so quickly despite not being contagious from person to person, and how can we find and identify the bacteria…….

That’s the more interesting question.

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To explain, it goes like this.

In fact, a quick glance at a medical textbook doesn’t convey just how strange a bacterium Legionella is. What even is this thing?

Anyone who knows what Legionella is probably thinks of it as a bacterium that invades cells. That’s an oversimplification.

‘Even the infectious disease professors couldn’t find it.’...