Scientist’s statue goes missing from Mumbai

The statue of the man who discovered tuberculosis has gone missing. This was supposed to be a part of the state of art museum in the pathology building of JJ hospital.

Robert Koch, the famous discoverer of the Mycobacterium TB is one of the many eminent scientists and researchers who worked at the old pharmacy college building of the JJ hospital.

“The department had Robert Koch’s statue. However no one kept a track of the statue. We are trying to figure out where and when it went missing. We are going to set an inquiry committee,” said the sources of the pathology department.

The search for the statue started when a person from the department asked for it during the World Tuberculosis Day on March 24 that commemorates the day in 1882 when Koch astounded the scientific community by announcing that he had discovered the cause of tuberculosis, the TB bacillus.

Koch’s work on Vibrio cholerae was done in two rooms of the old animal house behind the Coroner’s court. Koch was part of the German Plague Commission and was sent to Mumbai during the plague epidemic in 1897.

His research confirmed for the first time that one of the causes of plague was rat flea. He also worked for cholera vaccine at the hospital in 1902.

Dr DN Lanjewar former head of pathology department, JJ hospital said, “I don’t remember. But I know that there were two statues in our department.”