Jacob Bogatin: Robert Koch - Part 3

On March 24, 1882 Koch announced that he was able to identify the bacterium causing tuberculosis. Jacob Bogatin confirms that the publications of Robert Koch on tuberculosis have been identified for the first time the principles that later became known as Koch's postulates, the so-called "triad of Koch":

• This bacterium is present in this disease,
• obtain a pure culture of the microbe,
• experimental result using a pure culture of the same disease.

These principles are still theoretical foundations of medical microbiology.
The study by Koch tuberculosis was interrupted when he was under orders of the German government as part of a scientific expedition went to Egypt and India to establish the cause of the mass of cholera. Working in India, Koch isolated the microbe that causes the disease.
In 1885, Koch became a professor at the University of Berlin and director of the Institute of Hygiene. At the same time he continued to tuberculosis research, focusing on finding ways to treat this disease. In 1890, Koch identified the so-called tuberculin (sterile fluid containing a substance produced by the bacillus of tuberculosis during growth) that cause allergic reactions in patients with tuberculosis. Tuberculin did not apply to treatment of tuberculosis, since therapeutic effects are not possessed. It was found that the tuberculin skin test can be used in the diagnosis of tuberculosis.
According to Jacob Bogatin this discovery, which played an important role in the fight against tuberculosis in cattle was the main reason for awarding the Robert Koch in 1905, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. In his Nobel lecture, Koch said that if the look once the path, "which passed in recent years to combat this widespread disease such as tuberculosis, we can not but conclude that here was the first important steps."
In 1893 Berlin was shocked by the scandal. According to Jacob Bogatin Professor Koch was 50 at that time divorces his wife and married a young actress Hedwig Freiburg.
People who know little about Koch, often considered him suspicious, and unsociable, but friends and colleagues knew him as kind and sympathetic person. Koch was an avid admirer of Goethe and chess player.
Robert Koch died in Baden-Baden from a heart attack May 27, 1910.