ROBERT KOCH PUBLISHED THE FIRST PHOTOMICROGRAPHS OF BACTERIA.


KOCH, ROBERT. 1843-1910. Sammelband of 6 monographs on microbiology, including: 1. KOCH, ROBERT. 1843-1910. Die Aetiologie der Milzbrand-Krankheit, begrundet auf die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Bacillus anthracis. Breslau: 1876. 2. ---. Verfahrungen zur Untersuschung, zum Conserviren und Photographiren der Bacterien. Breslau: 1877.3. COHN, FERDINAND. 1828-1898. Unterzuchungen uber Bacterien. In Beitrage zur Biologie der Pflanzen. Breslau: Ferdinand Cohn, 1872.4. ---. Unterzuchungen uber Bacterien. II. Breslau: 1875.5. EIDAM, EDUARD. 1845-1901. Unterzuchungen uber Bacterien. III. Breslau: 1875.6. COHN, FERDINAND. Unterzuchungen uber Bacterien. IV. Breslau: 1876.6 works in 1 volume. 8vo. 4 colored lithographic plates and 3 leaves mounted with photomicrographic prints of bacteria. 20th century brown cloth. Text block separating in places, light browning.Two seminal publications on microbiology by Nobel Prize laureate Robert Koch, bound together in one volume. "C. J. Davaine, a doctor in Paris, had reported in the Comptes rendus the first identification of a specific micro-organism as the cause of a disease. This was the anthrax bacillus. Robert Koch, a provincial doctor in Posen, followed up Davaine's discovery and in the fifth of a series of 'Investigations into Bacteria' in course of publication in Cohn's Beitrage, he became the first to describe the complete life-history of a micro-organism, 'The Etiology of Anthrax' ((a), v). In the following paper - 'Experiences in attempting the Preservation and Photography of Bacteria' ((a) vi) — he detailed his methods of growing bacterial cultures in gelatine solutions and differential staining with aniline dyes discovered by W. H. Perkins in 1856. These two papers form the basis of modern bacteriological practice - indeed of the very science itself" (PMM). Koch's biographer Thomas Brock notes that the second of Koch's treatises "not only contained the first photomicrographs of bacteria ever published, but also described in detail all of Koch's procedures, including slide separation, staining, and preserving of specimens" (Thomas Brock, Robert Koch (Madison, WI, 1988). The volume also includes works by Ferdinand Cohn, a professor at the University of Breslau and the publisher of the Beitrage zur Biologie der Pflanzen, who printed Koch's two papers, works 5 & 6 in this sammelband, in 1876-1877. Koch's publications described the life cycle of a microorganism in unprecedented detail, illustrated with the first photomicrographs of bacteria ever published. The monograph on photographing bacteria is extremely rare, and marked the starting point of modern bacteriology. Garrison-Morton 2488; PMM 366a and 366b; Norman 1227 and 1228 (Koch), and 494 (Cohn).