ABSTRACT
Subscribers to the The Medical News (Philadelphia) who read the article in the April 7, 1883, issue “From our Special Correspondent” under the heading “Spina's Studies on the Bacillus of Tuberculosis” would have had no difficulty in understanding the correspondent's summary of Koch's claim to have discovered the bacillus that caused tuberculosis:
By applying a new method of colouring, he succeeded in detecting what he believes to be a new specific organism, and sought to establish its relation to tubercular disease by two important facts. First, this organism—bacillus—is nowhere found but in tubercular material, from which it is never absent; and, second, when cultivated and inoculated upon hitherto healthy animals, it causes well-characterized tubercular disease [cited in Grinstein, 1971].
