102 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ing good medical schools than by sup- 

 pressing those that are poor or by for- 

 mal restrictions making it difficult to 

 enter the medical profession. 



ROBERT KOCH 



In the death of Robert Koch, the 

 world loses one of its greatest men, 

 whose service to it has been beyond all 

 measure. It is not easy to realize the 

 changes in bacteriology and in medi- 

 cine which have taken place in the 

 course of the past thirty or forty years, 

 or how largely these are due to this 

 one man. Koch was preceded by Pas- 

 teur and Lister, but bacteriology and 

 the germ theory of disease scarcely 

 existed when in 1876 he published his 

 paper announcing the isolation of the 

 bacillus of anthrax. He was at that 

 time a country physician, but had had 

 the advantage of studying medicine at 

 Gottingen under Wagner and Henle. 

 One wonders whether the hundred and 

 twenty-five thousand physicians now 

 practising in the United States would 

 not produce some men of the type of 

 Koch if they had been turned in the 

 right direction at the university. If 

 so, how small would be the cost of such 

 schools in comparison with their value. 



Koch published in 1878 a second 

 important paper on infectious diseases, 

 and was in 1880 given opportunity to 

 devote himself to research work by 

 being appointed to the Prussian de- 

 partment of public health. In his 

 small laboratory at Berlin, with 

 Loeffler and Gatt'ky as assistants, he 

 developed the methods of bacteriology 

 by cultures and disinfection, and in 

 1882 made announcement of the far- 

 reaching discovery of the bacillus of 

 tuberculosis. A year later he visited 

 Egypt and India and discovered the 

 comma bacillus of cholera. 



Koch continued his study of tubercu- 

 losis, cholera and other diseases, not 

 only from the point of view of labora- 

 tory science, but devising and applying 

 means to combat them. In 1880 came 

 the discovery of tuberculin, the cura- 



tive power of which was exaggerated, 

 not so much by Koch as lj the general 

 public. Koch was fully justified by 

 its diagnostic value; his statement of 

 its curative properties was cautious, 

 and if it has not fully justified even 

 these modest claims, it has led to the 

 whole subject of vaccine therapy, in- 

 cluding diphtheria anti-toxin, and may 

 still fully confirm such claims as Koch 

 made for its curative value in tubercu- 

 losis. Koch was again criticized when 

 in 1901 he announced the discovery 

 that human and bovine tuberculosis are 

 not identical, but time appears to have 

 proved that he was correct in his facts 

 and also in his claim that the main 

 efforts should be directed toward pre- 

 venting human contagion. 



In later years Koch devoted himself 

 largely to tropical diseases and accom- 

 plished much by his studies in Africa 

 and Asia of parasitology, bacteriology 

 and hygiene, investigating rinderpest 

 and surra, the bubonic plague, malaria 

 and sleeping-sickness. 



Such rewards as a scientific man 

 may have were given to him. He was 

 appointed in 1885 professor of hygiene 

 in the University of Berlin and di- 

 rector of the Hygienic Institute, then 

 newly established. In 1891 he was ap- 

 pointed director of the new Royal In- 

 stitute for Infectious Diseases, and 

 became an honorary professor in the 

 university. This institute now forms 

 a part of the Rudolf Virchow Hospital, 

 and is known as the Koch Institute. 

 Koch received the Nobel prize in medi- 

 cine in 1905. But the rewards that 

 could be given to him were insignifi- 

 cant beside his services. 



Of the world's debt to Koch the 

 Journal of the American Medical Asso- 

 ciation says : " But death has claimed 

 the master and the world has lost its 

 leader in the struggle against infec- 

 tion. Endowed with a mind of the 

 first oraer, and animated, beneath a 

 quiet, impassive and meditative ex- 

 terior, by a spirit of unceasing but 

 wonderfully well-regulated activity, 

 which drove him on as by an internal 



