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story of Dr. Koch and his work, which appeared in the Boston Transcript:


Baden Baden, May 28.—Professor Robert Koch, the famous bacteriologist, died here yesterday afternoon from a disease of the heart. He was born at Klausthal, Hanover, Dec. 11, 1843.

The name of Dr. Robert Koch is one of the most illustrious in that comparatively small group of the world's great medical specialists. He was one of the very few men who have demonstrated entirely new principles and developed them to practical results.

Dr. Koch's investigation of anthrax, to which Pasteur had devoted a great deal of attention, first brought him into general recognition as an authority. A visitation of cholera at Hamburg afforded him scope for experiments in that direction, and to Koch undoubtedly belongs the distinction of specifying and demonstrating the cholera bacillus. He was placed at the head of the cholera commission, and subsequently visited Egypt and India, when those countries were scourged by a cholera epidemic, his services being recognized by various decorations of honor and by a substantial honorarium of 100,000 marks ($20,000).

In the course of his cholera investigations he exemplified the fact that the bacillus, or active organism of the disease, seldom enters deeper than the living membrane of the intestines. His discoveries in demonstrating separately and specifying the bacillus or micro-organism of disease, have also contributed most valuable knowledge of the cause of typhoid fever and erysipelas.

In the popular mind he was perhaps best known as the discoverer of a supposed cure for consumption, a remedy which failed to fulfil the