Robert Koch, malaria pioneer

Abstract

The role of Robert Koch in the early discoveries of the malaria lifecycle and the complex of diseases, the development of immunity, quinine prophylaxis and the mosquito theory has fallen into oblivion. As a mature and famous hygienist, Koch had travelled the Old World, where malaria was endemic. His first studies took place in Tanganyika, German East Africa (now Tanzania) in 1898 and thereafter in Italy and the East Asian archipelago. As malaria in Germany did not offer a sufficiently endemic situation, he chose the Istrian island of Brioni (Kroatia) to eliminate malaria. Because virtually all of Koch's publications are in German, his achievements on malaria never settled in the common memory of tropical medicine. Around the turn of the century the race to elucidate the transmission pathway through mosquitoes took place and though he hardly yielded any honour of priority, his research certainly determined the speed by which British and Italian contenders made their ways. His exertion and interference led to the awarding of the 2^nd Nobel Prize in Medicine to Ronald Ross only, leaving Giovanni Battista Grassi to draw the blank. Proof of this intervention in the otherwise well-known quarrel at the start of modern malaria research shows once more how personal characters may clash or join forces.

Figure 1.

Robert Koch.

Figure 2.

Parasites of "tropical malaria" in circulating red blood cells.

Figure 3.

Maturing parasites with pigment in the spleen of a deceased patient.

Figure 4.

Koch in his Berlin laboratory; note the birdcages in the front-left.

Figure 5.

Ambarawa hospital: mothers with their young children; Koch sitting behind the fence.

Figure 6.

The crew, amongst Papuans.

Figure 7.

The memorial at Brioni, placed in 1909.