Taxonomy and history of Enterococci

Enterococci were originally classified as enteric gram-positive cocci and later included in the genus Streptococcus. The term enterococcus was first used by Thiercelin in a paper from France published in 1899; the name was proposed to emphasize the intestinal origin of this new gram-positive diplococcus. In the same year, MacCallum and Hastings reported a case of endocarditis caused by an organism they called Micrococcus zymogenes; later papers suggest that this organism was actually a hemolytic enterococcus