Robert Koch
Robert Koch | |
---|---|
Clausthal, Kingdom of Hanover, German Confederation | |
Died | 27 May 1910 | (aged 66)
Nationality | German |
Education | University of Göttingen |
Known for | Koch's postulates Koch–Pasteur rivalry Bacterial culture method Germ theory of disease Medical microbiology Discovery of anthrax bacillus Discovery of tuberculosis bacillus and tuberculin Discovery of cholera bacillus |
Awards |
|
Scientific career | |
Fields | University of Berlin |
Doctoral advisor | Georg Meissner |
Other academic advisors | Friedrich Gustav Jakob Henle Karl Ewald Hasse Rudolf Virchow |
Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch (English:
While working as a private physician, Koch developed many innovative techniques in microbiology. He was the first to use the
The methods Koch used in bacteriology led to establishment of a medical concept known as Koch's postulates, four generalized medical principles to ascertain the relationship of pathogens with specific diseases. The concept is still in use in most situations and influences subsequent epidemiological principles such as the Bradford Hill criteria.[12] A major controversy followed when Koch discovered tuberculin as a medication for tuberculosis which was proven to be ineffective, but developed for diagnosis of tuberculosis after his death. For his research on tuberculosis, he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1905.[13] The day he announced the discovery of the tuberculosis bacterium, 24 March 1882, has been observed by the World Health Organization as "World Tuberculosis Day" every year since 1982.
Early life and education
Koch was born in
At the age of 19, in 1862, Koch entered the
Anthrax
Robert Koch is widely known for his work with anthrax, discovering the causative agent of the fatal disease to be Bacillus anthracis.[22] After officially becoming a district physician in Wollstein (today's Wolsztyn), Poland, in 1872, Robert began to delve into the disease called Anthrax. Near Wollstein, anthrax disease was regularly taking the lives of humans and livestock without evidence explaining why. Eventually, in 1876, Koch was able to make an incredible discovery that anthrax was triggered by one singular pathogen. Koch’s discovery of the dormant stage, the anthrax spores, allowed him to successfully unravel the mystery behind the anthrax disease. By gaining a better understanding of this pathogen, he was able to shed light on the bacterium’s remarkable resistance against environmental factors (“Robert Koch – Nobel Lecture” 2018). This groundbreaking achievement marked Koch as the pioneer scientist to discover that a microscopic organism was causing a disease to spread. His findings were especially impressive as they were done in a poorly equipped laboratory in Wollstein.
He published the discovery in a booklet as "Die Ätiologie der Milzbrand-Krankheit, Begründet auf die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Bacillus Anthracis" (The Etiology of Anthrax Disease, Based on the Developmental History of Bacillus Anthracis) in 1876 while working at in Wöllstein.
Career
After graduation in 1866, Koch briefly worked as an assistant in the General Hospital of Hamburg. In October that year he moved to Idiot's Hospital of Langenhagen, near Hanover, as a general physician. In 1868, he moved to Neimegk and then to Rakwitz in 1869. As the Franco-Prussian War started in 1870, he enlisted in the German army as a volunteer surgeon in 1871 to support the war effort.[19] He was discharged a year later and was appointed as a district physician (Kreisphysikus) in Wollstein in Prussian Posen (now Wolsztyn, Poland). As his family settled there, his wife gave him a microscope as a birthday gift. With the microscope, he set up a private laboratory and started his career in microbiology.[20][21]
Koch began conducting research on microorganisms in a laboratory connected to his patient examination room.
In 1885, Koch received two appointments as an administrator and professor at
Scientific contributions
Techniques in bacteria study
Robert Koch made two important developments in microscopy; he was the first to use an
Development of Petri dish
Koch's booklet published in 1881 titled "Zur Untersuchung von Pathogenen Organismen" (Methods for the Study of Pathogenic Organisms)[35] has been known as the "Bible of Bacteriology."[36][37] In it he described a novel method of using glass slide with agar to grow bacteria. The method involved pouring a liquid agar on to the glass slide and then spreading a thin layer of gelatin over. The gelatin made the culture medium solidify, in which bacterial samples could be spread uniformly. The whole bacterial culture was then put in a glass plate together with a small wet paper. Koch named this container as feuchte Kammer (moist chamber). The typical chamber was a circular glass dish 20 cm in diameter and 5 cm in height and had a lid to prevent contamination. The glass plate and the transparent culture media made observation of the bacterial growth easy.[38]
Koch publicly demonstrated his plating method at the Seventh
Tuberculosis
During his time as the government advisor with the Imperial Health Agency in Berlin in the 1880s, Koch became interested in tuberculosis research. At the time, it was widely believed that tuberculosis was an inherited disease. However Koch was convinced that the disease was caused by a bacterium and was infectious. In 1882, he published his findings on tuberculosis, in which he reported the causative agent of the disease to be the slow-growing Mycobacterium tuberculosis.[26] He published the discovery as "Die Ätiologie der Tuberkulose" (The Etiology of Tuberculosis),[34] and presented before the German Physiological Society at Berlin on 24 March 1882. Koch said,
When the cover-glasses were exposed to this staining fluid [methylene blue mixed with potassium hydroxide] for 24 hours, very fine rod-like forms became apparent in the tubercular mass for the first time, having, as further observations showed, the power of multiplication and of spore formation and hence belonging to the same group of organisms as the anthrax bacillus... Microscopic examination then showed that only the previously blue-stained cell nuclei and detritus became brown, while the tubercle bacilli remained a beautiful blue.[20][21]
There was no particular reaction to this announcement. Eminent scientists such as
All these factors together allow me to conclude that the bacilli present in the tuberculous lesions do not only accompany tuberculosis, but rather cause it. These bacilli are the true agents of tuberculosis.[44]
Cholera
In August 1883, the German government sent a medical team led by Koch to
Although Koch was convinced that the bacterium was the cholera pathogen, he could not entirely establish a critical evidence the bacterium produced the symptoms in healthy subjects (following Koch's postulates). His experiment on animals using his pure bacteria culture did not cause the disease, and correctly explained that animals are immune to human pathogen. The bacterium was then known as "the comma bacillus", and scientifically as Bacillus comma.[49] It was later realised that the bacterium was already described by an Italian physician Filippo Pacini in 1854,[50] and was also observed by the Catalan physician Joaquim Balcells i Pascual around the same time.[51][52] But they failed to identify the bacterium as the causative agent of cholera. Koch's colleague Richard Friedrich Johannes Pfeiffer correctly identified the comma bacillus as Pacini's vibrioni and renamed it as Vibrio cholera in 1896.[53]
Tuberculosis treatment and tuberculin
Koch gave much of his research attention on tuberculosis throughout his career. After medical expeditions to various parts of the world, he again focussed on tuberculosis from the mid-1880s. By that time the Imperial Health Office was carrying out a project for disinfection of
In a communication which I made a few months ago to the International Medical Congress [in London in 1881], I described a substance of which the result is to make laboratory animals insensitive to inoculation of tubercle bacilli, and in the case of already infected animals, to bring the tuberculous process to a halt.[20][21]
By November 1890, Koch demonstrated the effectiveness of the extract in treating humans by administering the vaccine through the Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) technique.[54] This absorbs the vaccine through the skin by means of multiple shallow punctures on the skin and many patients and doctors went to Berlin to get Koch's remedy.[15] While this was effective in humans, his experiments also revealed that when the substance was inoculated into his tuberculosis-infected test guinea pigs, they presented with severe symptoms. This outcome, characterized by an exaggerated immune response, coined the term “Koch’s phenomenon.”[55] This is known as an extreme skin reaction that manifests itself at the BCG vaccination site within a few days after the vaccine is administered to an individual infected with tuberculosis. When a normal guinea pig was inoculated with pure tubercle bacillus, the wound would close rapidly and heal within several days. Afterwards, the site of the injection would open and form an ulcer until the animal died. However, if the same inoculated culture was injected into a guinea pig that was previously infected with tuberculosis, the site of the injection becomes dark, and eventually heals normally and quickly (Moreland, 2024). The uncertainty in the chemical nature coined the term phenomenon in the name “Koch’s phenomenon.”
Koch published his experiments in the 15 January 1891 issue of Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift,
The first report on the clinical trial in 1891 was disappointing. By then 1061 patients with tuberculosis of internal organs and of 708 patients with tuberculosis of external tissues were given the treatment. An attempt to use tuberculin as a therapeutic drug is regarded as Koch's "greatest failure."[44] With it his reputation greatly waned. But he devoted the rest of his life trying to make tuberculin as a usable medication.[54] His discovery was not a total failure: the substance is now used to test for hypersensitivity in tuberculosis patients.[15]
Acquired immunity
Koch observed the phenomenon of acquired
Koch's postulates
During his time as government advisor, Koch published a report on how he discovered and experimentally showed tuberculosis bacterium as the pathogen of tuberculosis. He described the importance of pure cultures in isolating disease-causing organisms and explained the necessary steps to obtain these cultures, methods which are summarized in Koch's four postulates.[64] Koch's discovery of the causative agent of anthrax led to the formation of a generic set of postulates which can be used in the determination of the cause of most infectious diseases.[22] These postulates, which not only outlined a method for linking cause and effect of an infectious disease but also established the significance of laboratory culture of infectious agents, became the "gold standard" in infectious diseases.[65]
Although Koch worked out the principles, he did not formulate the postulates, which were introduced by his assistant Friedrich Loeffler. Loeffler, reporting his discovery of diphtheria bacillus in 1883, stated three postulates as follows:[66]
- 1. The organism must always be present in every case of the disease, but not in healthy individuals.
- 2. The organism must be isolated from a diseased individual and grown in pure culture.
- 3. The pure culture must cause the same disease when inoculated into a healthy, susceptible individuals.[39][67]
The fourth postulate was added by an American plant pathologist Erwin Frink Smith in 1905, and is stated as:[68]
- 4. The same pathogen must be isolated from the experimentally infected individuals.[69]
Personal life
In July 1867, Koch married Emma (Emmy) Adolfine Josephine Fraatz, and the two had a daughter, Gertrude, in 1868.[13] Their marriage ended after 26 years in 1893, and later that same year, he married actress Hedwig Freiberg (1872–1945).[13]
On 9 April 1910, Koch suffered a heart attack and never made a complete recovery.[25] On 27 May, three days after giving a lecture on his tuberculosis research at the Prussian Academy of Sciences, Koch died in Baden-Baden at the age of 66.[18] Following his death, the Institute named its establishment after him in his honour. He was irreligious.[70]
Awards and honors
Koch was made a Knight Grand Cross in the Prussian
Koch established the Royal Prussian Institute for Infectious Diseases in Berlin 1891. After his death it was renamed Robert Koch Institute in his honour.[8]
The World Health Organization observes "World Tuberculosis Day" every 24 March since 1982 to commemorate the day Koch discovered tuberculosis bacterium.[16]
Koch's name is one of 23 from the fields of hygiene and tropical medicine featured on the frieze of the
A large marble statue of Koch stands in a small park known as Robert Koch Platz, just north of the Charity Hospital, in the Mitte section of Berlin. His life was the subject of a 1939 German produced motion picture that featured Oscar winning actor Emil Jannings in the title role. On 10 December 2017, Google showed a Doodle in celebration of Koch's birthday.[76][77]
Koch and his relationship to Paul Ehrlich, who developed a mechanism to diagnose TB, were portrayed in the 1940 movie Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet.
Controversies
Louis Pasteur
At their first meeting at the Seventh International Medical Congress in London in August 1881, Koch and Pasteur were friendly towards each other. But the rest of their careers followed with scientific disputes. The conflict started when Koch interpreted his discovery of anthrax bacillus in 1876 as causality, that is, the germ caused the anthrax infections. Although his postulates were not yet formulated, he did not establish the bacterium as the cause of the disease: it was an inference. Pasteur therefore argued that Koch's discovery was not the full proof of causality, but Pasteur's anthrax vaccine developed in 1881 was.[78] Koch published his conclusion in 1881 with a statement: "anthrax never occurs without viable anthrax bacilli or spores. In my opinion no more conclusive proof can be given that anthrax bacilli are the true and only cause of anthrax," and that vaccination such as claimed by Pasteur would be impossible.[79] To prove his vaccine, Pasteur sent his assistant Louis Thuillier to Germany for demonstration and disproved Koch's idea.[80] They had a heated public debate at the International Congress for Hygiene in Geneva in 1882, where Koch criticised Pasteur's methods as "unreliable," and claimed they "are false and [as such ] they inevitably lead to false conclusions."[16] Koch later continued to attack Pasteur, saying, "Pasteur is not a physician, and one cannot expect him to make sound judgments about pathological processes and the symptoms of disease."[15]
Tuberculin
When Koch discovered tuberculin in 1890 as a medication for tuberculosis, he kept the experiment secret and avoided disclosing the source. It was only after a year under public pressure that he publicly announced the experiment and the source.[5] Clinical trials with tuberculin were disastrous and complete failures. Rudolf Virchow's autopsy report of 21 subjects treated with tuberculin to the Berlin Medical Society on 7 January 1891 revealed that instead of healing tuberculosis, the subjects died because of the treatment.[81] One week later, Koch publicised that the drug was a glycerine extract of a pure cultivation of the tuberculosis bacilli.[5] The German official report in late 1891 declared that tuberculosis was not cured with tuberculin.[44] From this moment onwards, Koch's prestige fell apart. The reason for his initial secrecy was due to an ambition for monetary benefits for the new drug, and with that establishment of his own research institute.[17] Since 1885, he had tried to leave government service and create an independent state-run institute of his own.[16] Following the disappointment, he was released from the University of Berlin and forced to work as Director of the Royal Prussian Institute for Infectious Diseases, a newly established institute, in 1891. He was prohibited from working on tuberculin and from claim for patent rights in any of his subsequent works.[31]
Human and cattle tuberculosis
Koch initially believed that human (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) and cattle tuberculosis bacilli (now called Mycobacterium bovis) were different pathogens when he made the discovery in 1882. Two years later, he revoked that position and asserted that the two bacilli were the same type.[82] This later assumption was taken as a fact in veterinary practice. Based on it, legislations were made in US for inspection of meat and milk.[83] In 1898, an American veterinarian Theobald Smith published a detailed comparative study and found that the tuberculosis bacteria are different based on their structure, growth patterns, and pathogenicity. In addition he also discovered that there were variations in each type. In his conclusion, he made two important points:
- Human tuberculosis bacillus cannot infect cattle.
- But cattle bacillus may infect humans since it is very pathogenic.[84]
By that time, there was evidence that cattle tuberculosis was transmitted to humans through meat and milk.[85][86] Upon these reports, Koch conceded that the two bacilli were different but still advocated that cattle tuberculosis was of no health concern. Speaking at the Third International Congress on Tuberculosis, held in London in July 1901, he said that cattle tuberculosis is not dangerous to humans and there is no need for medical attention.[16] He said, "I therefore consider it unnecessary to take any measures against this form of TB. The fight against TB clearly has to concentrate on the human bacillus."[87] Chair of the congress, Joseph Lister reprimanded Koch and explained the medical evidences of cattle tuberculosis in humans.[88]
The 1902 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
The Nobel Committee selected the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to be awarded for the discovery of the transmission of malaria. But it could not make the final decision on whom to give it to — the British surgeon Ronald Ross or the Italian biologist Giovanni Battista Grassi. Ross had discovered that the human malarial parasite was carried by certain mosquitoes in 1897, and the next year that bird malaria could be transmitted from infected to healthy birds by the bite of a mosquito.[89] Grassi had discovered Plasmodium vivax and the bird malaria parasite, and towards the end of 1898 the transmission of Plasmodium falciparum between humans through mosquitoes Anopheles claviger.[90] To the surprise of the Nobel Committee, the two nominees exchanged polemic arguments against each other publicly justifying the importance of their own works. Robert Koch was then appointed as a "neutral arbitrator" to make the final decision.[91] To his disadvantage, Grassi had criticised Koch on his malaria research in 1898 during an investigation of the epidemic,[90] while Ross had established a cordial relationship with Koch.[92] Ross was selected for the award, as Koch "threw the full weight of his considerable authority in insisting that Grassi did not deserve the honor."[93]
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- Fillipo Pacini (1854) "Osservazioni microscopiche e deduzioni patologiche sul cholera asiatico" (Microscopic observations and pathological deductions on Asiatic cholera), Gazzetta Medica Italiana: Toscana, 2nd series, 4(50):397–401; 4(51):405–12.
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- ^ Real Academia de la Historia, ed. (2018). "Joaquín Balcells y Pasqual" (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 2019-07-08. Retrieved 2020-08-01.
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1) Es müssen constant in den local erkrankten Parteien Organismen in typischer Anordnung nachgewiesen werden.
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Further reading
- OCLC 39951653.
- de Kruif, Paul (1926). "ch. IV Koch: The Death Fighter". Microbe Hunters. Blue Ribbon Books. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company Inc. pp. 105–144. Retrieved 2020-10-14.
- Morris, Robert D (2007). The blue death: disease, disaster and the water we drink. New York: OCLC 71266565.
- Gradmann, Christoph (2009). Laboratory Disease: Robert Koch's Medical Bacteriology. Baltimore: ISBN 978-0-8018-9313-1.
- Weindling, Paul. "Scientific elites and laboratory organization in fin de siècle Paris and Berlin: The Pasteur Institute and Robert Koch’s Institute for Infectious Diseases compared," in Andrew Cunningham and Perry Williams, eds. The Laboratory Revolution in Medicine (Cambridge University Press, 1992) pp: 170–88.
- Christoph, Hans Gerhard: Robert Koch " Trias deutschen Forschergeistes " Naturheilpraxis / Pflaum- Verlag / Munich 70.Jahrgang December 2017 pages 90–93
External links
- Robert Koch Institute
- Audio version of this page
- Robert Koch on Nobelprize.org including the Nobel Lecture on 12 December 1905 The Current State of the Struggle against Tuberculosis
- MPIWG-Berlin, Robert Koch Biography and bibliography in the Virtual Laboratory of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
- Biography on the Science Museum web site Archived 2016-01-25 at the Wayback Machine
- Musoptin.com, original microscope out of the laboratory Robert Koch used in Wollstein (1877)
- Musoptin.com, microscope objectives: as they were used by Robert Koch for his first photos of microorganisms (1877–1878)
- Works by Robert Koch at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Robert Koch at Internet Archive
- Newspaper clippings about Robert Koch in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW
- Texts on Wikisource:
- "Koch, Robert". Encyclopedia Americana. 1920.
- "Koch, Robert". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911.
- "New International Encyclopedia. 1905.