The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-06-05
CRITICISM OF KocH's WORK.

CRITICISM OF KOCH'S WORK.
 Will His Hostility to Quinine Do Harm
 Charged With Reckless Haste
 Careless Blunders and Dishonest Pla
 giarism.'
 No living doctor has more world
 wide renown than Robert Koch His
 early work on the bacillus of tuberculo-
 sis secured him a well-deserved reputa-
 ton in his professions for that research
 proved him to be master of accurate
 methods of investigation, patient in
 their employment and cautious in his
 deductions. Men predicted that young
 Koch was the coming Pasteur--a fore cast, alas, that has not been fulfilled
 In 1884 cholera broke out in Egypt, and Koch was sent there to study the dis
 ease. The telegraph soon spread the
 news through Europe that Koch had 1 found the cholera bacillus. Bacteriolo- | logical experts have not accepted this l discovery as valid; Klein offered to
 swallow as much cholera bacillus" as Koch chose to prepare. But the expert
 criticism did not reach the general pub 1 lie or lessen Koch's popular fame. Six years later the world was startled by the | pleasing announcement that Koch had | discovered a certain cure for consump- | ton. Kaiser Wilhelm and the daily press proclaimed Koch as one of the greatest of the worlds benefactors The subsequent demonstration that the discovery was a mares nest, and that the famous tuberculin did more harm than good to the unlucky invalids into whom it had been injected, could no
 more lower Koch's popular prestige
 than it could deprive him of the high honor and rich rewards which grate- full world had showered upon him. Unwarned by these failures, Koch has not returned to the cautious, scientific methods of his early manhood His re- ports on his recent researches on vari- ous tropical diseases are marred by the Icareless blunders, reckless haste and dishonest plagiarism which have previ- ously ruined his scientific reputation. It is not, however, with Koch's reputa- tion that we are here concerned, but with the new danger he has added to life in tropical Africa. Black-water fe- yer is admittedly the most deadly, the most obscure, of the diseases from which Europeans now suffer in that un- healthy country. The malady causes a breaking up of the red corpuscles of the blood in the kidneys, and accordingly its most conspicuous symptom is that the urine is dark brown or black-much the same color as stout. Several theo- ries have been proposed to explain the nature of the disease. At first it was at tributed to the action of malaral para sites but this idea has been disproved, as the blood of patients suffering from black-water fever is frequently free from these organisms. Sambon has re- gently advanced strong reasons for con- sidering that the fever is due to the parasite that causes Texas fever in cat tie. In opposition to both of these or ganic theories there is a third explana tion, which attributes the fever to qui nine poisoning. This idea was original ly proposed by Tomaselli. of Catania, who studied the disease in Sicily and Sardinia. He noticed that the adminis- tration of a strong dose of quinine was often followed by sharp paroXysm of black water fever in patients suffering from the disease He accordingly con- cluded that black-water fever Is simply quinne poisoning. The theory has been repeatedly discussed, and fresh obser- vations made by Kuchel, Kohlstock, Stendel and others. The theory, how ever, is untenabe Black-water fever attacks people who have never taken quinine; overdoses of quinine in healthy | people do not produce the symptoms of | the disease, and quinine, when properly | applied, checks and even cures It.
 Some authors, such as Plehn, who once accepted Tomaselli's theory, have now renounced it, recognizing that though quinine may produce parox- ysm of black-water fever in patients from the disease, it can never produce the disease. Nevertheless Koch, after observing sixteen cases in the hospital at Dar-es- -salaam, in which he noticed the usual action of quinine in patients suffering from black-water fever, has reproposed Tomaselli's dis credited theory, and dogmatically as- serts it as a now incontrovertible fact. Neither in Koch's public lecture in Ber- lin, nor in his recently issued "Reise- Berichte" is there any acknoWledg- nent of Tomaselli's work. But that is )nly Koch's way. He similarly an-
  ;quitoes in spreading malaria as if that were quite his own idea, instead of hav- ng been proposed by Manson and proved oy Ross researches in Calcutta.
 Owing to Koch's reputation among he uneducated, his views have received he widest publicity, and it will take years before the refutation has become IS widely known. There is already a considerable prejudice against quinine; { has nasty taste, and people say that { gives them headache, brings on sick less or makes them deaf. Every tropi- al doctor knows how difficult it is to ersuade irritable fever-stricken pa- tents to take quinine properly Now hat Koch has declared that it's action Is 0 bring on the most deadly African fe- CTS, people are refusing to take 1t at H. "The British Medical Journal for eptember 24 contains a piteous lament rom Dr. R. Moffatt. of Uganda, declar- lg that Quinine is the only thing that i'll cure black-water fever. and that ome of his patients now refuse to- take
 in consequence of Koch's reckless ut- 9ranceS. The victims of tuberCulin lay be reclloned by scores; but Koch's dvOcacy of the view that black-water ever IS qulnine poisoning will probably