58 Background of Work and Study in Public Health 



Koch found the so-called "comma bacillus," and for his courage 

 and persistence was compared to another heroic figure in medi- 

 cine, Rudolph Virchow, who had gone to the scene of a typhus 

 epidemic and risked his life " as much as the man who examined 

 the bodies of cholera patients in the dirty huts by the Ganges." 

 Dr. William Osier, then in Berlin, vv^rote of Koch: "His career 

 is particularly pleasing, and it reminds one of that other country 

 physician who nearly a century ago made the memorable observa- 

 tions on cow-pox." This represented a considerable shift in 

 Osier's attitude toward the discoveries of Koch and Pasteur, and 

 appears to have been quite typical of the reaction of many medical 

 scientists in America. Dr. Harvey Gushing, in his two-volume 

 study of The Life of Sir Willia772 Osier discloses that in 1881 



Osier, like many other physicians, did not appear at this time fully to grasp 

 as Lister did the significance of Pasteur's work, or to show great interest 

 in Koch's remarkable contributions; and in [a letter written from the 

 International Medical Congress of London at which Pasteur was called on 

 to describe his recent experiments, which showed that animals could be 

 protected " against certain scourges " by vaccination, Osier] dismissed the 

 subject with the mere statement that "" there was an abundant discussion 

 on germs " in the Pathological Section, hideed [continued Dr. Gushing 

 in his discussion of the attitude of the medical profession in 1881 toward 

 Pasteur's and Koch's discoveries,} the editorials in most of the British and 

 Canadian journals of the time intimate that M. Pasteur saw germs every- 

 where, and his views regarding their prevalence as a cause of disease were 

 regarded as rather horrible, if not mirth-provoking. 



It seems that Pasteur's anthrax vaccine was interpreted, at first, 

 as of primary value to agriculture and veterinary science, what 

 there was of the latter. When, however, in 1882 Koch's discovery 

 of the tubercle bacillus was reported, the attitude toward the work 

 started by Pasteur changed with amazing celerity. This discovery 

 became, as Smith recognized, one of the great finds of modern 

 pathology. It became acknowledged as "one of the most impor- 

 tant discoveries bearing upon the relation of micro-organisms to 

 disease, a subject which," Dr. Gushing has said,^*"' " made this 

 particular decade stand out above all others in the history of 

 medicine." 



Greater recognition came to Dr. Koch after his work on Asiatic 



^°^ Idem, 189-190. 



"" The life of Sir William Osier, op. cit., 1: 198-199. 



