How Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur changed the world ?

On the occasion of World TB day.

Robert Koch, A doctor with a small rural practice in Germany, was the first scientist to firmly establish the link between germs and disease.
Prior to him people believed that disease occurred due to bad air. People even used to think that maggots found in rotting meat developed spontaneously.

And then God handed over a microscope to ROBERT KOCH. In fact he had received it as a birthday gift from his wife, and began to spend a lot of time by examining samples of all sorts under it.

Eventually, while he studied a drop of blood that had come from a sheep recently killed by anthrax, he was the first to identify the bacteria that causes the disease anthrax.

Koch’s work on anthrax was published in 1876 and touched off a revolution in medical knowledge and ultimately led to the basic steps that are now known as Koch’s postulates.

In the second half of 19th century, his Berlin lab became a rival only to that of LOUIS PASTEUR in Paris, who also had a microscope. And Koch’s discovery of ANTHRAX set off a race to discover new bacteria responsible for other diseases.

In 1882 Koch succeeded in isolating the MYCOBACTERIUM tuberculosis. Pasteur in the mean time developed the RABIES VACCINE by 1885.

Next year, a severe cholera epidemic broke out in Egypt. And both Koch’s, Pasteur rushed to Egypt to discover the responsible germ. Sadly one of Pasteur’s team members contracted the disease in Alexandria and died.

But Koch succeeded in isolating the cholera VIBRIO. He then travelled to India, where cholera was endemic, and confirmed his theory that infected water was the cause of its transmission.

Friedrich LÖFFELER working in Koch’s lab, was able to culture the DIPHTHERIA bacillus that was earlier discovered by KLEB and named as KLB.

If the diphtheria toxin was identified in Paris by Pasteur’s student Alexandre YERSIN, Emile von BEHRING in Berlin ( Koch’s lab) invented the DIPHTHERIA ANTITOXIN and went on to win the Nobel prize for it. His assistant Japanese scientist KITASATO discovered the TETANUS antitoxin in the Same lab.

In 1894 both Kitasato (Robert Koch’s student) and Alexandre Yersin (Louis Pasteur’s student) discovered the plague bacillus contemporaneously although it’s named after the later YERSINIA PESTIS.