304 OFFICIAL REFUTATION OF DR. KOCH’S THEORY 
K.L.H., Inspector General of Hospitals and Fleets (retired), 
Honorary Physician to Her Majesty the Queen; Dr. John 
Sutherland, Member of the Army Sanitary Commission. Dr. 
Timothy Lewis, acted as Secretary : 
1. The epidemic outbreak of cholera which occurred in 
Egypt about two years ago gave a fresh impetus to the study 
of the etiology and pathology of the disease, and special 
measures were taken by the Governments of Germany and 
France, as well as by our own, to elucidate the matter during 
the continuance of the epidemic. The labours of the German 
Commission (of which Dr. Robert Koch was the chief) attracted 
exceptional attention, from the circumstance that it was believed 
that a specific organism—a bacillus, resembling one which had 
been found in glanders—had been discovered by them, which 
warranted the assumption that further study would be likely 
to demonstrate that it was the special cause of the disease. 
2. With this object in view, the German Commission pro- 
ceeded to India towards the latter end of 1883, and early in 
1884 Dr. Robert Koch announced that this organism—now 
described, however, as curved, or comma-shaped, and not 
straight—must in reality be looked upon as the essential cause 
of cholera, on the grounds, principally, that it was always 
present in the alvine discharges in this disease, and in the 
mucous tissue of the lower part of the small intestine; that 
it was not to be found under any other conditions ; and that a 
causal connexion between the organism and the disease had 
been demonstrated by the circumstances that comma-shaped 
organisms had been found in a tank in Calcutta near a village 
in which the people suffered from cholera, and that the disease 
diminished simultaneously with the diminution of the commas 
from the water of the tank. 
3. As it was obvious that, in view of the new light which 
was very generally supposed to have been shed on the etiology 
of cholera, other prophylactic and curative measures would 
have to be adopted in the event of the statements being 
confirmed, and that harm might result were such measures 
resorted to on erroneous grounds, Sir Joseph Fayrer (in his 
