XV1ll 
ROBERT KOCH, 1843—1910. 
ProFr. Kocu was one of the great discoverers of medicine. His researches 
have exercised a profound influence not only upon the development of 
medical science, but also upon the welfare of mankind. 
Born in 1843 at Klausthal, and educated at the Gymnasium, he studied 
medicine in Gottingen from 1862 to 1866. After a short period as assistant 
at the hospital in Hamburg, he commenced practice in Langenhagen, 
Hanover. In 1867 he removed to Rackwitz, in Posen, where, in addition 
to carrying on a country practice, he found time to study for, and to take a 
degree in physical science. In 1872 he became district surgeon in 
Wollstein. It was whilst at Wollstein that Koch’s attention was first 
seriously turned to the interpretation of infectious diseases. The study of 
the work of Pasteur and his pupils on fermentation and putrefaction, and 
of Lister on the antiseptic treatment of wounds, led him to the conclusion 
that the etiology of infection was not to be found in miasmata from the soil, 
as commonly entertained at this time, but much more probably, in the 
entrance into the tissues of microbes, and their multiplication therein. 
At the time Koch commenced to investigate infectious disease, bacteriology 
had become differentiated as a department of scientific enquiry, but the 
methods proper to the new science were not developed, and, although a 
number of cardinal facts had been brought to light, knowledge on the 
subject was chaotic, and advance temporarily checked. Diseases of man and 
animals presented unlimited problems, but the means to attack them were 
lacking. The means which led to the next important advances were supplied 
by Robert Koch, who possessed that rare combination of inteliectual qualities 
which enabled him, not only to see what was the next question to ask of 
Nature in order to advance one step further, but also to devise experimental 
methods which ensured an answer to this question. In this last faculty 
Koch was pre-eminent, and the methods of this youngest of the sciences are 
to a large extent the methods of Robert Koch. 
Two of his earliest papers—that on the etiology of anthrax, founded on 
the life-history of Bacillus anthracis published in 1876, and that on experi- 
ments on the etiology of wound infections, published in 1878, written when 
district surgeon at Wollstein—have become classics. This work was carried 
out in addition to the duties of a practitioner of medicine, and without the 
assistance of any laboratory equipment beyond a good microscope. Pollender 
and Davaine had seen the anthrax bacillus twenty years earlier in the blood 
of infected animals, and in 1863 the latter had shown that the blood 
containing the bacilli was capable of infecting animals, if inoculated into 
them. That these bacilli were in reality the cause of the disease was, 
however, controverted. Koch reasoned that as the disease remained attached 
to certain pastures, if the anthrax bacilli were the living virus, they ought to 
