Robert Koch

Chronicled events

1. 1876​·​A Country Doctor Catches a Killer
   #5781

   Anthrax comes from one particular germ. Grown outside any animal for eight generations, it still gives mice anthrax. Its spores survive in the soil for years, which is why some pastures stay deadly, whatever their air.

2. October 7, 1892​·​The Man Who Drank Cholera
   #5782

   The cause of cholera is a comma-shaped bacterium, which I found in 1883 and 1884 in the intestines of its victims.

   #5784

   Not everyone who swallows a germ falls ill, as with any infection. One man’s mild illness doesn’t show that the germ needs anything more.

   #5785

   In Hamburg’s epidemic, the town of Altona next door was largely spared, on the same soil and under the same sky. Only its water differs: Altona filters it. The germ in the water decides it, not the soil.