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Tracing the journey of tuberculosis

Robert Koch, who discovered the bacteria and won a Nobel Prize, visited India at the Government's request on October 27, 1897

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The Indian Vetrinary Research Institue at Mukteshwar, in the Veterinary Science Museum, the microcope that Koch used to determine the tuberculosis bacteria, various other equipments that were used by Koch in determining the cause of the disease
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'If work goes on in this powerful way, then victory must be won,' so said Robert Koch, the Father of Tubercle Bacilli, way back in 1905, while receiving the Nobel Prize for his work. However, over the years even with so many advancements in science, the harsh fight against this deadly disease is far from won. Very few know Koch's visit to the hills of Kumaon in Uttarakhand eight years before his acceptance of the Nobel Prize.

The relics of his visit have been carefully preserved in the Indian Veterinary Research Institute (IVRI) at Mukteshwar in the Veterinary Science Museum. IVRI, which was formerly known as Imperial Bacteriological Laboratory.

Founded in 1889, was later shifted to Mukteshwar in 1893. On stepping inside the museum, one could see a black and white photograph of luminaries like Dr Alfred Lingard, Dr Robert Koch, Dr Pfieffer, and Dr G Gaffky, some of the doctors who were witness to Koch's historic visit in 1897.

Aged fifty-four, the German bacteriologist came to Mukteshwar at the request of the Government of India, to demonstrate methods adopted to battle the disease mostly found in animals. He had just finished studying the origins of the Rinderpest disease in South Africa.

Koch discovered the TB bacteria in 1880. "The pertinent question was its transmission from animals to humans and from humans to humans. Was it air borne or was it something el se," said MA Ramakrishnan, senior scientist at IVRI.

Beside the photograph stood a bronzed-coloured microscope that stood tall, encased in a glass box. "It was the microscope used by Koch to observe the growth of the organism on glass slides," continued Ramakrishnan.

Before the 1900s, answers to fundamental questions such as the origin of diseases in humans and animals were yet to be found. Koch's work on anthrax, TB, typhus malaria, black water fever, plague, surra of horses and cattle in India and Africa were pioneering.

In the latter years of his life, Koch was able to establish that bacilli causing TB in humans and in cattle were not identical. When he stated this at the International Medical Congress in London in 1901 he faced much opposition. But Koch has thenceforth been proven right. "Such clarity was not available when he visited the Mukteshwar laboratory in 1897. He was a scientist of international repute and to have him visit the laboratories was a matter of immense pride," said Ramakrishnan.

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