Cholera : some historical reflections

Abstract

The cholera vibrio was first discovered by Koch in Egypt in 1883; this he confirmed in Calcutta in 1884 by finding it in every case of the disease examined. This was an excellent piece of research, as was to be expected from that immortal master, with the French team, in the unavoidable absence due to ill-health, of the equally immortal Pasteur, made up of Pasteur's best pupils' acting as a pace maker in Egypt, but it would appear that some merited honour even at this late hour should be given to the Italian Pacini who during the 1854 cholera epidemic in Florence detected the motile vibrios in the faeces of cholera patients and not only described their general morphological appearances but also correctly attributed an ethological relationship to the “immense number of vibrious which I have found in the distended intestines”. Cholera has been one of the biggest if not the biggest, public health problem that the World Health Organisation had to tackle in 1971-72.