Jean-Claude Rambaud The place occupied today in basic and clinical research by intestinal disease related to Clostridium difficile is such that it is hard to remember that this range of disorders was completely identified only in 1977-1978, even though pieces of the puzzle had been identified, much earlier. A brief historical review of the discovery of the enteropathogenicity of C. dif. ficile in man might thus be useful. The bacterium was described in 1935 in the stools of infants, using the name Bacillus difficilis 7]. U ntiI 1977, the microorganism, renamed C. difficile, considered to be...