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100° of the Discovery of Koch's Bacillus

On March 24, 1882, Robert Koch presented a paper to the Physiological Society of Berlin entitled “On the etiology of tuberculosis”. Through this communication, he announced to the world a brilliant discovery: the tuberculosis bacillus or Mycobacterium tuberculosis or Koch bacillus, that is to say the microbe responsible for tuberculosis. It thus confirmed the results of Villemin's experiments on the transmissibility of tuberculosis in animals. This remarkable discovery had many important consequences. Before Robert Koch, tuberculosis was considered a manifestation of social poverty. We have known since 1882 that it is an infectious and contagious disease and that contagion occurs from sick people to healthy people, particularly through coughing. We also knew, thanks to Robert Koch's discovery, that it was not impossible to hope one day to be able to prevent it. This is what happened a few years later thanks to the discovery in 1920 of the tuberculosis vaccine, BCG, by Calmette and Guérin. We hope to one day discover a drug capable of curing the disease, by killing the microbe which was responsible for it. This is what happened a few decades later, from 1945, thanks to the discovery of antibiotics and in particular streptomycin isolated by Waksmann. This drug made it possible for the first time in human history to cure patients suffering from tuberculous meningitis, a disease that until then had been inexorably fatal in 100% of cases. Today, anti-tuberculosis drugs are capable of curing all recognized cases of tuberculosis. This is why, in this year 1982, 100 years after Robert Koch's discovery and taking into account the serious and difficult situation facing the world, the World Health Organization launched a challenge to the disease by formulating the slogan that every country must adopt: “Beat tuberculosis, today and forever”.