The truth about Koch's cholera germ / Ray Lankester.

  • Lankester, Ray.
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The truth about Koch's cholera germ / Ray Lankester. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    nTTTTOmrTv^Turr ( &)/KOCH THE TRUTH ABOUT KOCH'S CHOLERA GERM. By Professor Ray Lank ester. Last year, when the German Imperial Government sent Dr. Robert Kcch and his companions to India to prosecute their investigation of the causes of cholera, English men of science felt a certain sense of shame that Germany should step in, in order to carry out work which properly belonged to England. It was well-known to the medical profession in England that for many years able and cautious investigators such as Dr. Timothy Lewis and Dr. Vandyke Carter had been, under the auspices of the* Endian Government, carrying on continuously their search foD'a reply to,the two questions :—(i) Is cholera caused by a bacterium (bacillus)-like organism ? (2) It so, what.* precisely are the form, habit, and properties of that organism? It was felt that these excellent observers might very possibly have failed (as they themselves conscientiously state that they have failed) to answer either of these questions satisfactorily for want, of personal experience in the most recent developments of the art of “ bacterium-hunting ’’ as practised in Europe. On the other hand, it was known vhat Dr. Robert Koch was one of the most skilful and successful of bacterium-hunters. He it was who, after having added much to existing knowledge as to the bacillus of cattle anthrax, and the bacteria which infect wounds in various animals, had recently discovered a bacterium—the bacterium or bacillus tuberculosis—which there was (and is) the strongest ground for regarding as the cause (that is to say, the immediate exciting cause) of the dire disease known as tubercule, phthisis or consumption. Accordingly much was expected of Dr. Koch’s visit to India. If any man could be expected to discover and clearly establish the existence of a bacterium as the cause of cholera, it was Robert Koch. Allow me here to insist further on the words “ dearly establish.” It is one thing to find a corkscrew-shaped or a rod-shaped or a crotchet¬ shaped bacillus swarming in the intestine of a diseased person, and another thing to clearly establish • that the particular bacillus in question is the cause of the particular disease from which the man is sudering. We are all of us at all times swarming with bacteria, micrococci, bacilli, vibrions, and spirilla. The mouth of every man. woman, and child contains thousands of these organisms of various shapes and kinds. It is here that ihev were first of all discovered just f'wo hundred years 3<?o. bv Leuwenhoeck, the Dutch microscopist, who described them in the Philo¬ sophical Transactions of our Royal Society. Not only is the mouth of man, but every moist part of the surface of the body, and above all the intes¬ tine, precisely in those persons who are perfectly healthy, swarming with various kinds of bacteria. No one knew this better than Dr. Koch ; no one knew better than he that in order to clearly establish that a particular bacillus produces a particular disease it is not enough’ to show that the bacillus occurs abundantly in the intestines of persons suliering from that disease. Dr. Robert Koch gained his own great name in reference to ihe bacillus of consumption by showing far more than this about it. He took the little organism (the bacillus of consumption), when he had detected B i