November 5, 1920] 



SCIENCE 



431 



pressed with tlie danger; indeed so appalling 

 did lie consider the calamity of an epidemic 

 outbreak of cholera in Europe that he did not 

 trust himself to bring with him to Berlin cul- 

 tures of the bacillus isolated in India or 

 Egypt, but preferred to destroy them lest by 

 inadvertence they should gain access to food 

 or water. Now, however, that cholera actually 

 existed on European soil and danger of its 

 spread was imminent, the circumstances not 

 only justified but compelled instruction in its 

 bacteriological detection, and for this pur- 

 pose he went to Toulon to secure anew fresh 

 cultures. 



But Koch admonished his pupils not to 

 carry away from the laboratory living cul- 

 tures of cholera bacillus. This piece of 

 sound advice, following the end of the course 

 at a Kneipe held in honor of the Geheimrath 

 led to an amusing incident. The next morn- 

 ing "Welch and Prudden met accidentally at 

 an early hour on one of the bridges spanning 

 the Spree, each, as it seems, seeking secrecy. 

 It developed that each had gone to an apothe- 

 cary's shop and purchased concentrated sul- 

 phuric acid (or was it a saturated solution of 

 corrosive sublimate?), which they had poured 

 over the surface of tube cultures of the 

 cholera bacillus originally intended to take 

 with them to America and that they now 

 proceeded to drop into the Spree. They ex- 

 pected, of course, to see the tubes sink im- 

 mediately out of sight, instead of which they 

 had the momentary disquieting experience of 

 observing them bobbing up and down as they 

 slowly floated down stream. The guilty pair 

 hurried away, just, it is said, as a large 

 Schuizmann appeared on the scene. 

 I An impression of Koch and the influence 

 ■of his instruction at the time is given by 

 Prudden : 



Thus the course in the study of bacteria, of one 

 mouth's duration, in Koch's laboratory was 

 brought to an end, and the writer can not refrain 

 from remarking that the calm, judicial mind of 

 Dr. Koch — the master worker in his field — ^his 

 marvelous skill and patience as an experimenter, 

 his wide range of knowledge and his modest, un- 

 assuming presentation of his views are all calcu- 



lated to inspire confidence in the results of his own 

 work, to stimulate his students to personal exertion 

 in this field, and to lend certainty to the already 

 widespread hope that ere long through the re- 

 sources of science we shall be able to cope success- 

 fully with those most terrible and fatal enemies 

 of the human race — the acute infectious diseases.s 



Welch arrived in Baltimore in September, 

 1885, and there found Councilman at work 

 in pathology. He immediately joined Welch 

 and together they set up a laboratory in 

 a couple of rooms on the top floor of the 

 biological laboratoi-y, offered them by Newell 

 Martin. The two-storied building at the hos- 

 pital, designed as a deadhouse, was hurriedly 

 completed and converted into a pathological 

 laboratory. This arrangement was intended 

 merely as a stop-gap in the emergency and 

 until the buildings for the medical school, 

 then expected soon to be organized and con- 

 structed, could be provided. As it happened, 

 the consummation of the medical school proj- 

 ect was long delayed and the small quarters in- 

 tended merely for a deadhouse and its essen- 

 tial adjimcts, became the permanent home of 

 the pathological department, as well as indeed 

 the actual physical foundation on which were 

 later erected two additional stories to house 

 temporarily the departments of anatomy and 

 pharmacology of the medical school. When 

 in a few years those two departments secured 

 elsewhere other and more adequate quarters, 

 the pathological department spread through 

 all the vacated space, which, in view of its 

 expanding activities, was sorely needed. 



The history of the pathological department 

 of the Johns Hopkins University and Hos- 

 pital, that was to play so profound a part in 

 the educational progress of the United States, 

 dates from 1886, at which time Welch began 

 to exert the influence which peculiarly distin- 

 guishes his career from that of his prede- 

 cessors in this country and elsewhere. 

 Hitherto there had been abroad departments 

 or institutes of pathology by which was 

 usually meant pathological anatomy and his- 



3 Prudden, T. M., on Koch's method of studying 

 bacteria. Report to the Connecticut State Board of 

 Health for 1885, pages 225-226. 



