Meanwhile, in Germany, physician Robert Koch was working on an epidemic of anthrax that was sweeping local farm animals. Other scientists had seen a bacterium, Bacillus anthracis, in the victims’ tissues. In 1876, Koch injected this microbe into a mouse – which died. He recovered it from the dead rodent and injected it into another one – which also died. Doggedly he repeated this grim process for over 20 generations and the same thing happened every time. Koch had unequivocally shown that the bacterium caused anthrax.
anthrax
