56 Background of Work and Study in Public Health 



to be done. I regard it as the greatest discovery yet made in bacteriology, 

 and I believe Koch will astound and shame us all with discoveries yet 

 to come. 9^ 



Koch, at this time scarcely thirty three years old, had spent 

 less than ten years in medical practice since getting his degree of 

 doctor of medicine at the University of Gottingen. Cohn imme- 

 diately published Koch's memoir which demonstrated that the 

 " anthrax bacillus is the cause of the disease, and that a pure 

 culture grown through several generations outside the body can 

 produce it in various animals."'*^ Moreover, Pasteur completely 

 confirmed Koch's results. Of Koch's immediately following tri- 

 umphs. Dr. Garrison **" has commented summarily: 



In November, 1877, Koch published his methods of fixing and drying 

 bacterial films on cover-slips, of staining them with Weigert's anilin dyes, 

 of staining flagellae, and of photographing bacteria for identification and 

 comparison. ^°° In 1878 appeared his great memoir on the etiology of 

 traumatic infectious diseases (" Untersuchungen ueber die Aetiologie der 

 Wundinfectionskrankheiten," Berlin,) in which the bacteria of six different 

 kinds of surgical infection are described, with the pathological findings, 

 each microorganism breeding true through many generations in vitro or 

 in animals. These three memoirs elevated Koch to the front rank in 

 medical science, and, through Cohnheim's influence, he was appointed to 

 a vacancy in the Imperial Health Department {Kaiserlicbes Gesundheit- 

 samt), with [Friedrich] LofBer and [Georg] Gaffky as assistants, in 1880. 

 Here, in 1881, he produced his important paper upon the method of 

 obtaining pure cultures of organisms by spreading liquid gelatin with 

 meat infusion upon glass plates, forming a solid coagulum. 



Apparently, the first written references by Smith to these scien- 

 tific discoveries appeared in the May 31, 1883, issue of the Michi- 

 gan School Moderator '^°'^ and dealt with Koch's discovery and 

 proof that tuberculosis is a highly infectious bacterial disease 



"^ S. and J. T. Flexner, William Henry Welch etc., op. cit., 100. See also, fimile 

 Duclaux, Pasteur, The history of a mind, op. cit., 242. 



®* F. H. Garrison, Introduction to the history of medicine, op. cit., 578, and 

 authorities cited. The title of Koch's paper was " Aetiologie der Milzbrandkrank- 

 heit begriindet auf die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Bacillus anthracis," Cohn's Beitr. 

 z. Biol. d. Pfianzen, 2: 277 fF., Breslau, 1876. 



"* Introduction to the History of Medicine, op. cit., 578-579. 



^'"' Robert Koch, Verfahren zur Untersuchungen, zum Conserviren und Photo- 

 graphiren der Bacterien, Cohn's Beitrage 2 (3): 399-434, Breslau, with 24 photo- 

 micrographs on 3 plates. 



'"'3 (36): 653. 



