Negri body

[3] Adelchi Negri, an assistant pathologist working in the laboratory of Camillo Golgi, observed these inclusions in rabbits and dogs with rabies.

The American pathologist Anna Wessels Williams made the same discovery,[4] but because Negri published his results[5] first, the bodies bear his name.

Later that same year, however, Paul Remlinger and Rifat-Bey Frasheri in Constantinople and, separately, Alfonso di Vestea in Naples showed that the etiologic agent of rabies is a filterable virus.

Negri continued until 1909 to try to prove that the intraneuronal inclusions named after him corresponded to steps in the developmental cycle of a protozoan.

In spite of his incorrect etiologic hypothesis, Negri's discovery represented a breakthrough in the rapid diagnosis of rabies, and the detection of Negri bodies, using a method developed by Anna Wessels Williams, remained the primary way to detect rabies for the next thirty years.