Robert Koch

1
Robert Koch

• Linking Bacteria to Human Disease

2
Order of Progress

• Prevention
• Cause
• Cure

3
Biography

• A doctor who was Born in Prussia in 1843
• Interested in Pasteurs Germ Theory
• He received a Microscope as a present in 1873
• Franco Prussian Rivalry
• Franco-Prussian War 1870/1
• German Government gave Koch money to set up a
  research institute to rival Pasteur

Read Dialogue page 130
4
Isolating the Germs that caused Anthrax

• Explain how 1 Sheep and 20 generations of mice
  allowed Koch to prove that a particular germ
  caused Anthrax. Explain why he succeeded?

5
Germ Cultures

• Kochs isolation technique pioneered the use of
  culture plates
• He extracted the blood from an infected animal
• He found that if he injected an animal with the
  infected blood it would catch the disease much
  quicker
• The more times he did this the stronger the
  disease would become
• Eventually, this germ could be extracted and be
  encouraged to breed a pure form in a glass
  culture plate.

6
The Floodgates open

• Using Kochs methods, other scientists were able
  to isolate and identify the germs that caused
  particular diseases
• List the causes of diseases discovered in the
  1880s and 1890s
• Page 131
• However, knowing the cause of these diseases
  still did not help to treat any sick patients,
  yet.

7
Pasteur Strikes back

• Prevention
• Cause
• Cure

8
Pasteur responds to Robert Koch

• Nationalistic Competition
• France humiliated by Prussia in 1870/1 war
• French Government agrees to finance Pasteur
• (Koch already receiving German Government money)
• He had a stroke in 1868
• Feeling mortal?

9
Pasteur Strikes it Lucky

• Impressed by Jenners work on Smallpox
• But Jenner and Pasteur did not understand how
  vaccination worked
• Trial and error
• Chicken Cholera, 1879
• Common disease affecting farmers livestock
• Pasteur experiments with injecting weaker forms
  of disease into chickens
• Little success
• His team goes home for the summer
• On return, they accidentally use a strain that
  had been left uncovered for the whole summer
• It works!
• Exposure to the air had weakened the germs
• Chance only favours the mind which is prepared
  

10
Pasteur perfects his system

• Page 132
• Explain how and for what diseases, Pasteur was
  able to develop and perfect his system for
  creating vaccines.
• Task page 133
• Why were the causes of disease finally
  discovered in the 1860s and 1870s