Laboratory disease

by Christoph Gradmann

"In the nineteenth century, the new field of medical bacteriology identified microorganisms and explained how they spread disease. This book interweaves the history of this discipline and the biography of one of its founders, Nobel Prize-winning German physician Robert Koch (1843-1910)." "Koch contributed to modern medicine by inventing or improving fundamental techniques such as bacterial staining, solid culture media, mass pure cultures, and the use of animal models. His discoveries, which dominated medical science at the turn of the last century, are epitomized in a set of rules named after him. "Koch's Postulates" are still invoked today in attempts to prove the causal involvement of pathogens in infectious diseases." "In a double history, Christoph Gradmann narrates the development of a discipline and the biography of a scientist. Drawing on Koch's extensive laboratory notes, Gradmann details how Koch developed his scientific method and discovered the bacterial causes of anthrax,