Reprinted from the Remedy: Robert Koch, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the Quest To

Reprinted from The Remedy: Robert Koch, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the Quest to Cure Tuberculosis by arrangement with Gotham Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, A Penguin Random House Company. Copyright Thomas Goetz, 2014. On July 31, 1881, with the triumph of Pouilly‑le‑Fort spreading through Europe, Pasteur crossed the English Channel bound for London. His destination was St. James’s Palace and the Seventh International Medical Congress. Though there had been previous grand meetings on medicine, this seventh congress promised something of historical proportion. It seemed perfectly timed to capture a new passion for the potential of science. The British Medical Journal, its hometown pride evident, was effusive: It is always possible to exaggerate the greatness of events, as it is of monuments, to which we are in too close a proximity. .The mere fact of the meeting together in such unprecedented06 numbers of the leading powers engaged in the study and practice of medicine and the pursuit of collateral scientific work, has been a circumstance of which the influence in the future cannot but be long and deeply felt, and of which the present results are as interesting as they have been delightful. More than three thousand scientists attended from seventy countries— from “every land in which scientific medicine is practiced,” as The Lancet described it. The delegates were entertained as if they were dignitaries, feted by London’s most prominent citizens, including the lord mayor of London and the Baroness Burdett- Coutts. Pasteur was there, to discuss his spectacular work on the anthrax vaccine, as was Koch, who spoke about some remarkable laboratory techniques he’d developed at his new quarters in Berlin. Virchow was in attendance, as was Lister, and William Osler, the Canadian physician who would go on to cofound Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. The congress served as a political stage as well. The Prince of Wales gaveled the first session open, and the crown prince of Russia made an appearance. (The germophobe Pasteur, to his chagrin, found himself obliged to shake hands with the prince.) Pasteur’s work on an anthrax vaccine was the big news, and he was clearly the man of the hour. When he was introduced in the immense hall, cheers rang out “not once only,” described a report in The Popular Science Monthly, “but again and again, [for] the scientific veteran whose renown has spread from his quiet Parisian laboratory over the whole civilized world.” The enthusiasm in London was more than just scholarly. Medical sciences were fast becoming essential economic tools, partly to address the needs of Europe’s crowded cities and also as a necessity for overseas colonization and empire building. As countries raced to exploit their holdings in Africa and Asia, they were confronting infectious diseases such as malaria, cholera, and sleeping sickness, illnesses that threatened both indigenous populations and the new European colonialists. The medical congress offered an essential forum where the germ theory could be discussed and debated. The agenda, accordingly, was filled with bacteriological demonstrations and lectures. This was due largely to Lister’s efforts— he had made sure that both Pasteur and Koch were in attendance. Lister was an unabashed enthusiast for the germ theory and its potential for medicine. Just a year earlier he had suggested, presciently, that “an appropriate ‘vaccine’ may be discovered for measles, scarlet fever, and other acute specific diseases in the human subject.” And being neither French nor German, he was free to admire Koch’s work as well as Pasteur’s. It turned out, in fact, that Lister had been following Koch’s research closely since the latter’s anthrax paper in 1876; in an address to the British Medical Association in August 1880 he had praised Koch’s inspired work on anthrax and infections. “Though a hard worked general practitioner, Koch has contrived to devote an immense amount of time and energy to his investigations,” Lister said. “He has succeeded in demonstrating the presence of these minute organisms in a manner never before attained.” Though Pasteur had the spotlight at the 1881 medical congress, Koch had been making his own advances in recent months (albeit of a much less theatrical variety). In particular, he had been improving his laboratory techniques, methods that would help make the germ theory more-accepted science. Koch demonstrated his advances in Lister’s lab during the medical congress, and crowds packed in tight around Koch’s tables and instruments. First, Koch showed his microphotography tools, explaining how he had refined the lens and isolated the bacteria in photographs. Then he turned to his latest breakthrough: a new technique for culturing bacteria. Traditionally, bacteriologists worked with liquid organic materials such as milk or, in Koch’s ingenious case, the optical fluid from inside a cow’s eye. Bacteria flourished in these environments, but liquid was a difficult medium to work with. The microbes moved about in the fluid and could be impossible to isolate, making it difficult to measure their growth. He had noticed, though, that bacteria and molds readily grew upon a cooked potato— and that, moreover, they would grow outward from their point of origin. This made it far easier to isolate the microbes and accurately measure them. But germ cultures grew inconsistently on potato slices, keeping Koch on the lookout. He soon discovered that gelatin was much more promising, especially since it could be poured evenly on a glass plate. The advance here was purely technical; it offered a better method for pursuing science. But this makes his breakthrough no less significant. The paper Koch published explaining his work, which he blandly titled “Methods for the Study of Pathogenic Organisms,” is still referred to today as the bible of bacteriology. As with his work on microphotographs and on wound infections, the methods he detailed in the paper gave the germ theory a scientific rigor and a process that it had lacked previously. Demonstrating these techniques in Lister’s lab in London, Koch displayed a distinct lack of showmanship. Keeping his head down and speaking almost in a mumble, he quietly explained his methods, his manner the antithesis of Pasteur’s razzle- dazzle performances. To those not paying close attention, his presentation would have seemed a mundane recitation of banal laboratory procedures. But his demeanor was deceptive. With each gesture, each tool, Koch was pushing science forward and giving other scientists a platform for further progress. Among those in the audience was Louis Pasteur, who couldn’t help but be impressed. As Koch finished his demonstration and the observers began leaving the room, Pasteur stepped over to him. “C’est un grand progres, Monsieur,” he said. In the weeks following the congress, Koch and his assistants would improve the plating technique considerably. After one assistant, Walther Hesse, told his wife about the gelatin technique and mentioned that it wasn’t yet perfect— the gelatin tended to turn runny in hot weather— she suggested they try agar, a similar but stabler substance derived from seaweed that she used to make jelly. It worked splendidly— so much so that it continues to be the standard medium for most cultures today. The invention was soon improved upon by another assistant in Koch’s lab, Julius Richard Petri, who replaced the flat glass plates that Koch had been using with round plates with raised edges. This, of course, was the petri dish, the very plate that continues to be used to this day in laboratories the world over. Reprinted from The Remedy: Robert Koch, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the Quest to Cure Tuberculosis by arrangement with Gotham Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, A Penguin Random House Company. Copyright Thomas Goetz, 2014. .

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