World of Scientific Discovery on Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch
Koch was born on December 11, 1843. As one of thirteen children born to a mining engineer and his wife, Koch spent his youth in the Harz Mountains in Clausthal, Germany. During his adolescent years, his father insisted he learn the shoemaker's trade, but when money became available for an academic career, Koch entered the University of Göttingen as a student of medicine and natural science at the age of 19. He graduated in 1866. After service as a surgeon in the Franco-Prussian War, Koch settled down as a country doctor in Wollstein, what is now Wolsztyn, Poland.
Working in a homemade laboratory that was separated from his examining room by a curtain, Koch began to study microorganisms. His microscopic studies led him to develop a technique by which he spread a liquid gelatin on glass slide plates to produce a transparent solid medium for the isolation of pure cultures. Considered one of his greatest achievements, the methods of plating pure cultures and preparing dried and heat-fixed smears of bacteria for staining proved to be major contributions to bacteriology. Koch's techniques are still used in the study of diseases.
Koch's work with bacteria led him to examine the causative agent of anthrax, a deadly disease of cattle and sheep. For years, farmers had been confused about the outbreaks of anthrax in fields where infected cattle had been removed years earlier. After isolating strains of the anthrax bacillus, Koch showed that, under certain conditions, the bacilli formed spores that could remain dormant for several years. These spores remained in infected fields and could develop into the disease-causing anthrax bacillus under favorable conditions. By the late nineteenth century, researchers had put forth the germ theory of disease, but no one had been able to prove that a single identifiable microorganism was responsible for a given disease. Koch's publication of his work with the anthrax bacillus proved the germ theory.
In 1883, Koch made great strides in public health through his work with cholera. In competition with French researcher Louis Pasteur, who had taken a team to Egypt, Koch, likewise, took a group of German scientists to Egypt in an attempt to win the race to isolate the causative agent. But the epidemic in Egypt ended before Koch's research was completed, and he subsequently went to India, where he was able to isolate the comma-shaped bacillus responsible for cholera, Vibrio cholerae, from samples of drinking water, food, and clothing.
Koch became internationally known for his advancement of the field of bacteriology. In 1885, he was named director of the new Institute of Hygiene in Berlin. Five years later, Koch published the Four Postulates on which modern bacteriology is built: 1) the organism must be present in every case of the disease; 2) it must be cultivated in a pure culture; 3) it must produce the disease in a susceptible animal upon inoculation; and 4) it must produce the same disease when healthy animals are inoculated.
Koch also contributed to the study of tuberculosis, a debilitating respiratory disease. In 1882, he was able to isolate Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the tiny tubercle bacillus that causes tuberculosis. It was Koch's search for a cure for tuberculosis, however, that would cause him temporary shame in the eyes of his fellow researchers. He thought he had found the cure, and in 1890, under pressure from the German government, he announced that he had "at last hit upon a substance that has the power of preventing the growth of the tubercle bacillus not only in the test-tube, but in the body of an animal." Thousands of tubercular patients rushed to Berlin for treatment with the magic potion, tuberculin. Those inoculated eventually died of miliary tuberculosis, considered the worst form of the disease. Koch, who had always conducted his research in secrecy, was forced to reveal the method by which he obtained tuberculin. In his search for a cure, he had cultured tubercle bacilli on a glycerine broth, heat-killed them, and filtered off the liquid. He had hoped the result would be an antitoxin similar to the one developed for diphtheria. But rather than discover the cure for tuberculosis, Koch actually had discovered the substance used for diagnosis of the disease. Despite this disappointment, Koch received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1905 for his work with tuberculosis.
Koch had married Emmy Fraats in 1866; she bore him one child. He later married Hedwig Freiberg in 1893. Koch died on May 27, 1910, in Baden-Baden, before he or any of his German colleagues could find a biological treatment for tuberculosis. In fact, it was his rivals in France who ultimately triumphed in the quest for a cure. Today, recognized for his pioneering work in the field of bacteriology, Koch is best remembered for the studies in which he established the germ theory of disease.
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