5 - Robert Koch in Bulawayo

Summary

As soon as he received written acceptance of his terms, Koch wrote to the London office of the B.S.A.C., on December 22, 1902 to suggest that he should travel to Bulawayo not by the fast mail ship from London to Cape Town, but via a slower route, along the east coast of Africa to Beira. He recommended that he take that route because the disease had apparently broken out in Beira and spread from there. Moreover, “I could institute researches into the occurrence of this or similar diseases at the different stopping places at which the steamer may touch.” He added “I shall be glad if you will send me the report on Texas Fever or Redwater in Rhodesia by Mr. Gray and Mr. Robertson and any other reports upon diseases affecting human beings and cattle.” Koch thus asked, explicitly, for a copy of the final joint report in which Gray and Robertson had given a detailed picture of clinical and post-mortem findings, had carefully re-described the “juvenile form” of the parasite and had noted that the juvenile form had been seen in hundreds of cases, only twenty of which also showed the typical pear-shaped parasite. That report, discussed in chapter 3, was published as a pamphlet in August, 1902, and had been reprinted in the November issue of the Agricultural Journal of the Cape of Good Hope.