126 THE MICROSCOPICAL NEWS. 
THE, CHOLERA  GERSE 
HE discovery of the cholera bacillus by Koch and his colleagues, 
Fischer and Gaffky, and the announcement of its presence in 
tank water, appear to have caused even a greater sensation in India 
than in Europe. The Indian papers teem with articles and letters 
on the subject. Whether Prince Bismarck’s popularity is waning 
or not in his own country, he is just now being regarded in India 
as one of the foremost philanthropists of the age. The conduct of 
England, which “makes laws for the prevention of scientific 
discovery,” is contrasted with that of Germany, which pays the cost 
of sending a Commission to our great dependency in order to 
discover for us the nature of the disease most dreaded there. 
It was a happy thought of Prince Bismarck—who has as much 
on his hands as Mr. Gladstone has—to send a Commission of 
Inquiry to Egypt and India on this very difficult and important 
errand, and some people may be inclined to wonder why it was 
left to a Continental Government to do such a thing: why 
Englishmen have not had the entire credit—which they well might 
have had—of making this very interesting discovery. As it is, 
although the actual proof of identification of the microscopic 
organism which must in future be recognised as the cholera germ 
as the cause of the disease is exhibited by an English medical 
gentleman in India—Dr. Vincent Richards—a very large share of 
the credit for the discovery unquestionably belongs to Dr. Koch. 
Dr. Koch’s researches in Egypt, though inconclusive, encouraged 
him to believe that cholera had a parasitic origin, and he did 
discover, in the cholera patients he examined, a certain kind of 
bacilli, ‘‘ microscopic creatures in shape like a small ruler or piece 
of stick.” He did not, however, discover the source of these 
outside the human system. Hence it might have been hastily 
assumed that the parasites were a result, and not a cause, of the 
disease. Dr. Koch and his companions, however, proceeded to 
Calcutta, and while they were there, an epidemic of cholera broke 
out in a native quarter of the city where there was a pond, the 
water of which was used for drinking and bathing purposes. This 
water was microscopically examined by Dr. Koch, who discovered 
in it—what he had not previously succeeded in discovering apart 
from the human subject—the same kind of parasites which he 
found in the cholera patients, and which are quite distinct from 
those that are known to produce consumption, scarlet fever, and 
foot-and-mouth disease. Moreover, coincident with the subsidence 
of the outbreak in Calcutta, it was found that the parasites became 
scarcer in the water. Unfortunately for Dr. Koch, all his attempts 
by way of experiment to reproduce the disease by inoculating 
