El misterio del muguet en la Francia de Luis Felipe de Orleáns (1830-1848) / The muguet's mystery in the France of Louis Philipe d'Orleans (1830-1848)

Resumen Durante el severo reinado de Luis Felipe de Orleáns (1830-1848) existió un breve intervalo de paz en Francia, permitiendo el desarrollo de las ciencias médicas, entre ellas la pediatría. El Dr. Vanier, viendo que los estudiantes de medicina tenían difícil acceso a los hospitales de niños, quiso ayudarles creando para ellos una revista con temas y casos pediátricos, entre éstos comunicaciones sobre el muguet, la candidiasis oral de los recién nacidos y también de lactantes mayores, por parte del célebre Trousseau, de Valleix y de los investigadores Gruby y Berg, quienes llegarían a descubrir que no se debía a la lactancia ni a las nodrizas, sino a un "parásito vegetal", un hongo similar a los champiñones.

Abstract Under the severe rule of Louis Philippe of Orleans (1830-1848) a brief interval of peace in France was favorable for the development of some medical arts, like pediatrics. The Dr. Vanier, considering how difficult was for the students the access to a children's hospital, wanted to help their learning with a journal with clinical cases and conferences on children pathology, including several papers on muguet (the oral infection by Candida albicans in newborns), written by the famous Trousseau and the clinical investigators Valleix, Gruby and Berg, who became to the description of the etiological agent as "a vegetal parasite, a fungus similar to the mush-rooms".

Historia sucinta de Candida albicans, blanca pero no tanto / Brief history of Candida, white but not so much

From the begin of clinical microbiology in the second half of the nineteenth century, the fungi were neglected as contaminants without relevance for health, belonging the major advances of their study to the fields of milk derivatives and beer industries. However, the seek for the etiological agent of thrush, a very common oral pathology affecting the newborn, put the yeasts on the table near 1840 with three capital papers - Berg, Gruby and Bennett - speaking about spores from vegetable as parasites of animal and human beings. The door was open, and very soon, in 1853, came the decisive description by Robin of the Oidium albicans as the causative agent of this painful disease. Seventy years after, in 1923, Christine Marie Berkhout, rejecting this name, defined the genus as Candida, leaving the specie with the iterative Latin name of Candida albicans, that means "White-white". Or, perhaps, with a fine sense of humor, she has made an oxymoron, because "candida" means a brilliant white and "albicans" a matt one, both opposite adjectives. Or, may be, Christine is still saying us: "White…but not so white".