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| Infectious diseases Research... |
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Soon after the founding of the Institute for Infectious Diseases – now the Robert Koch Institute, – Robert Koch embarked on various expeditions. As early as 1883 when he was still working for the Imperial Health Office, he succeeded in discovering the pathogen responsible for cholera, a comma-shaped vibrio, during a cholera epidemic in Egypt. Also in 1883, Koch studied the epidemiological situation in India at the Medical College Hospital, Calcutta. Thanks to the experience gained in Egypt and India and to ongoing research into cholera and typhus, Koch and Gaffky were able to soon control the cholera epidemic in Hamburg in 1892.
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| Photo of the cholera pathogen (Vibrio cholerae) under an electron microscope. |
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| ... and Animal Epidemics Research |
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In 1896 Koch and his coworker Kolle succeeded in saving thousands of cattle in South Africa from the cattle plague (“rinderpest”) by the development of what is known as the bile method. In Bombay, India in 1897, he performed research into the plague, the pathogen of which his former coworker Shibasaburo Kitasato had discovered in 1894 independently of Alexander Yersin. From India, Koch traveled on to East Africa and worked on the plague, surra disease (a condition in horses and cattle caused by trypanosomes), and red-water fever (a disease transmitted by ticks) until early 1898.
For the first time he also studied the subject of malaria, the pathogen of which had been discovered by Alfonse Laveran in 1880. In 1897 Ronald Ross (Nobel Prize in 1902) discovered the development cycle of malaria plasmodia in the anopheles mosquito. In the period to 1900 Koch undertook two further expeditions (Italy, Indonesia, New Guinea) which were devoted exclusively to the subject of malaria. He demanded that the blood of the afflicted be examined under the microscope for the purpose of differential diagnosis and that the appropriate medication be administered at specific time intervals.
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| A microscope of Carl Zeiss with the number 24 842 of the Ocean Road Hospital in Daressalam, Tanzania. Robert Koch probably took it with him to Africa in 1896. | Trypanosoma gambiense and Trypanosoma Brucei, each in their male and female forms, sketches by Robert Koch. | Anopheles mosquitoes, the carriers of malaria plasmodia. |
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