Tag: anthrax
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Koch’s postulates revisited
JMS PearceHull, England Van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1722), a Dutch botanist, using his early microscope observed single-celled bacteria, which he reported to the Royal Society as animalcules. The science of bacteriology owes its origin to two scientists of coruscating originality, Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch. Pasteur may be described as master-architect and Koch as master-builder of the…
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Diagnosis: Neurosyphilis. Treatment: Malaria, iatrogenic
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “The syphilitic man was thinking hard…about how to get his legs to step off the curb and carry him across Washington Street. Here was his problem: His brains, where the instructions to his legs originated, were being eaten alive by corkscrews.”– Kurt Vonnegut, The Breakfast of Champions Julius Wagner-Jauregg, M.D. (1857–1940) graduated…
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Robert Koch, M.D., and the cure for sleeping sickness: ethics versus economics
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden Primum non nocere. (First, do no harm.)— Hippocrates Robert Koch, M.D., (1843–1910) started his career as a country doctor and discovered the causes of tuberculosis, anthrax, and cholera. He is considered to be, along with Louis Pasteur, the founder of the field of bacteriology. Awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology…
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Scotland’s Anthrax Island
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “They make a desolation and call it peace.”— Agha Shahid Ali (1949–2001) During World War Two, the British government purchased from its owners the Gruinard Island, a one by two km island off the Scottish coast. The one inhabitant was evicted, and the island became the site of secret tests to weaponize…