Preparatory to Ri:si;ar( h (^ARrini 57 



afTccting both man and animals. Wc do not know whether Smith 

 purposely awaited such time as Koch's conchisions had been cor- 

 roborated by further research. Rut such an intention seems somc- 

 wh.;t indicated by the following language: 



Ihc rcscarthcs of the German savant, Dr. Koch, concerning the nature 

 and cause of consumption, have attracted world-wide attention. As a 

 result of experiments upon lower animals, and of exhaustive microscopic 

 study, the Doctor concludes: 1. That consumption is contagious, and 

 2. That it is caused by a hActer'ium. The latter may be set down as one 

 of the most striking pathological discoveries of modern times. So novel, 

 indeed, is this view ot tuberculosis that many have doubted its trustworthi- 

 Ress, preferring to await the verification of Dr. Koch's researches by other 

 observers before civini: full credence. Such verification we now have in 

 the experiments of Dr. W. W. Cheyne and other competent observers, 

 and we may accept Dr. Koch's views as substantially proven. Dr. 

 Cheyne's paper is published in The Practitioner, London, England, April, 

 1883. A good abstract of Dr. Koch's original article may be found in 

 The Philadelphia Medical Times for September 9, 1882, and a full transla- 

 tion of it in The Cincinnati Lancet and Clinic, May 12, 1883- 



By 1883 Koch, in charge of the important German Cholera 

 Commission which visited Egypt and India, was strengthening still 

 more the germ theory of disease and the doctrine of contagium 

 animatum (Henle, 1840) ^°- upon which the theory rested. His 

 most valuable studies of Asiatic cholera were performed in Egypt 

 and India, while residing in those countries when the epidemic 

 was violent. He reported from time to time his conclusions as to 

 the disease, its contagious nature and cause. An outbreak of 

 another epidemic in southern France enabled him, moreover, to 

 verify these conclusions which he presented in a formal address at 

 Berlin in July, 1884.^°^ During the spring of that year and soon 

 after the return of the expedition. Dr. Koch had been honored by 

 an official dinner for his "series of brilliant observations from 

 the discovery of the spores of the bacillus anthracis to that of the 

 bacillus of cholera." Koch, in response, is said to have "claimed 

 only to have discovered improved methods of observation." ^°'' 



^''" F. H. Garrison, Introduction to the history of medicine, op. cit., 575. 



***' Appleton' s Annual Cyclopedia and register of important events of the year 

 1844, n. s., 9: 143-145, N. Y., D. Appleton and Co., 1885. See also, idem, for 

 the year 1883, 8: 298, on cholera in Egypt; 7: 798-799, 1882, concerning Koch's 

 discovery of the tubercle bacillus; also, 4: 442-444, 1879, as to the germ theory 

 of disease 



^°* Harvey Gushing, The life of Sir William Osier, op. cit., 1: 212-213, quoting 

 a letter from Osier. 



