Kitasato Shibasaburō
In 1894, two bacteriologists, Alexandre Yersin of Switzerland and Kitasato Shibasaburō of Japan, independently isolated in Hong Kong the bacterium responsible for the 1894 Hong Kong plague. Though both investigators reported their findings, a series of confusing and contradictory statements by Kitasato eventually led to the acceptance of Yersin as the primary discoverer of the organism. Yersin named it "Pasteurella pestis" in honor of the Pasteur Institute, where he worked. In 1967, it was moved to a new genus and renamed "Yersinia pestis" in his honor. Yersin also noted that rats were affected by plague not only during plague epidemics, but also often preceding such epidemics in humans and that plague was regarded by many locals as a disease of rats; villagers in China and India asserted that when large numbers of rats were found dead, plague outbreaks soon followed.