Page:Newspaper writing and editing.djvu/202

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

cure" became a talismanic phrase of hope to millions. Consumptives rushed to Berlin from every corner of the earth. Men in the last stages of the disease died in railway carriages on their way to the great physician. No one regretted this tragic manifestation more than Dr. Koch. He had known that his experiments were incomplete and that he was not yet ready to put his tuberculin to practical use. He sought to keep it from the public, but sensationalists garbled his modest report, and the mischief was wrought.

Nevertheless, the student continued his work undaunted. The Robert Koch Institute for the investigation of tuberculosis was founded in Berlin. Andrew Carnegie contributed $125,000 to its work. From it has proceeded the most valuable backing of the world-wide war on the white plague.

Dr. Koch's latest work was the investigation in South Africa of sleeping sickness, in recognition of which Emperor William conferred on him the title of Excellency. From August, 1906, to October, 1907, the doctor and his assistants carried on these investigations on the Sesse Islands, in the Victoria Nyanza. The work was not without its dangers, as the disease manifested itself there in its most virulent form. Natives were dying on all sides. He discovered the origin of the disease in the tsetse fly. To destroy this fly and thus end the scourge he recommended the annihilation of the crocodile, on whose blood the fly feeds.

On one point Dr. Koch differed radically from most other authorities on tuberculosis. He maintained that tuberculosis in cattle was not transferable to man. This position he held to most vigorously at the Tuberculosis Congress in London, in 1901. In 1908, however, when he came to this country to attend the congress at Wash-