Safety Bites!

In 1865, a young man named Robert Koch published his report, full of long Teutonic words like Menschlichen, about the effects of eating a half-pound of butter every day.

With that auspicious start, Koch embarked on a remarkable career in the sciences – among other things, the good German doctor discovered the causative agents for anthrax and tuberculosis, and invented pure culture technique. Along the way, he developed a bitter rivalry with Louis Pasteur, dumped his wife for a 17-year old girl, killed several people with a non-miraculous miracle cure – and eventually, claimed a Nobel Prize. All in all, a fine, eventful career!

But first, let’s turn back the clock several decades — Koch, then a young(ish) doctor, was milling around the countryside, doing doctor-y things, and developing an interest in that old warhorse, anthrax. Quiz time, folks – what is anthrax?

Is anthrax :

i) Scary white stuff that turns up in the US Postal Service when the planets align right?
ii) HAIR GODS OF HEAVY METAL?
iii) A deadly bacteria-borne disease that can spread by infectious spores?

The answer, folks, is all of the above, of course! However, at the time, anthrax was more associated with sheep and farmers than with white powder in envelopes and metal bands, so Koch, being a countryside doctor, made it his business. And yes, I realize that HEAVY METAL GODS are more associated with goats then they are with sheep, but the less I say about that, the less I’m going to worry that Pat Robertson is going to walk out of my closet and do the cha-cha on my back, so I’m moving on.

In any case, our intrepid hero set forth with his weapons of choice, wooden splinters dipped in anthrax-infested sheep’s blood, and stabbed several terrified mice with them. History does not record what the mice had to say about their working relationship with Koch, but it is safe to assume that they just could not stand up to the man. It’s hard to stand up in general when infected with anthrax, I hear.

Koch, in a move that was as much ingenious as it was downright creepy, then drained a cow’s eye and used the liquid to grow, for the first time in human history, pure cultures of bacteria. Not satisfied with just that, Koch inoculated mice with this pure culture, giving them anthrax. By doing so, Koch had taken germs from mice, cultured the germs and then reinfected the mice, showing a chain of transmission. This is the Circle of Life, and it moves us all. (Not really.)

This discovery proved Louis Pasteur’s Germ Theory, which according to some accounts, pissed the French scientist off to no end because he had wanted to prove it himself. Other accounts indicate that Koch severely criticized Pasteur in his anthrax writings, targeting Pasteur’s later success in devising an anthrax vaccine based on Koch’s findings. In truth, both men had it out for each other, and accused each other of using impure cultures in their discoveries, as seen in this transcript of a heated debate between them :-

PASTEUR : Mousieur, your methods do not ensure purity as mine do. Please go home and cry.

KOCH: I think not. I submit that my methods produce cultures that are purer than your mother. I also submit that you fail at life.

A bitter rivalry soon sprung up between the two great scientists, stoked by nationalism. It was a veritable microbiology boxing match between France and Germany, with Koch and Pasteur facing off against each other. Very much like Rocky Balboa and Ivan Drago, except without the flying droplets of sweat and machismo.

In the next installment of Cow Eye Koch, Intrepid Microbiologist – Fun With Cholera!