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Abstract
[Betty Constance Hobbs] is probably best recognised for her pioneering work in establishing Clostridium perfringens as an important cause of food poisoning. In 1953, Betty and colleagues placed C perfringens food poisoning on a much firmer basis than previous reports from the UK, USA, and Sweden by providing detailed information on the epidemiology, disease presentation, diagnosis, serology, pathogenesis, and prevention. This paper characterised numerous outbreaks and showed that a high proportion of food poisoning of unknown origin was caused by C perfringens (then named C welchii). Almost all outbreaks were caused by meat that had been cooked and allowed to cool slowly: the cooking process being unlikely to kill the organism because of its ability to produce endospores and consequent heat resistance. Experiments on volunteers showed that it was consumption of live organisms (not toxin) that caused illness, with diarrhoea developing after consumption of live cultures in cooked meat broths. Subsequent studies have shown that illness resulted from production of an enterotoxin in the intestinal tract during sporulation of this bacterium.