and Bologna; honorary citizenships of Berlin, Woll-
stein, and his native Clausthal; and honorary member-
ships of learned societies and academies in Berlin,
Vienna, Posen, Perugia, Naples, and New York. He
was awarded the German Order of the Crown, the
Grand Cross of the German Order of the Red Eagle,
and Orders from Russia and Turkey.
In 1905 Koch was awarded the Nobel Prize in
physiology or medicine for his pioneering work on
tuberculosis and continued his experimental work on
bacteriology and serology. He died on May 27, 1910,
in Baden-Baden.
Though he made great strides in the study of tuber-
culosis, today, 2 billion people worldwide suffer with
latent infection. There are 8 million new cases a year,
and up to 2 million annual deaths.
Kocher, Theodor Emil(1841–1917) SwissSurgeon
Theodor Kocher was born on August 25, 1841, in
Berne, Switzerland, to a Swiss engineer. He received his
medical doctorate in Berne in 1865. In 1872 he became
ordinary professor of surgery and director of the Uni-
versity Surgical Clinic at Berne, wherehe remained for
the rest of his career.
He discovered a new method for the reduction of
dislocations of the shoulder in 1902, which he
explained in his Mobilization of the Duodenum.
He published numerous works on the thyroid
gland, hemostasis, antiseptic treatments, surgical infec-
tious diseases, gunshot wounds, and more. His book
Chirurgische Operationslehre (Theory on surgical
operations) reached six editions and was translated
into many languages. His book Erkrankungen der
Schilddrüse (Diseases of the thyroid gland) discussed
the etiology, symptology, and treatment of goiters. His
new ideas on the physiology and pathology of the thy-
roid gland caused great controversy, but after many
successful surgeries, his work on goiter treatment
became world known and accepted. In 1909 he
received the Nobel Prize for this work and donated the
prize money to create a research institute. Kocher
devised many new surgical techniques, instruments,
and appliances that carry his name, such as forceps
(Kocher and Ochsner/Kocher forceps, Kocher tweez-
ers), Kocher incision (in gallbladder surgery), the
Kocher vein (thyroid), Kocherization (surgery tech-
nique), and Kocher’s test (for thyroid-tracheomalacia).
TheKocher-Debré-Semélaigne syndrome is named for
him and Robert Debré and Georges Semélaigne. There
is also Kocher’s reflex (contraction of abdominal mus-
cles following moderate compression of the testicle)
and Kocher’s sign (eyelid movement). Kocher died in
Berne on July 27, 1917.Koch’s postulates Criteria proposed in the 19th cen-
tury by Nobel Prize winner (1905) Robert Koch to
determine whether a microbe is the cause of a particu-
lar infection. He laid down the following postulates,
which must be satisfied before it can be accepted that
particular bacteria cause particular diseases.- The specific organism should be shown to be present
in every case of the disease. - The specific microorganism should be isolated from
the diseased animal and grown in pure culture on
artificial laboratory media such as in a Petri dish. - The freshly isolated microorganism, when inoculated
into a healthy laboratory animal, should cause the
same disease seen in the original animal. - The microorganism should be recovered from the
experimentally infected animal.
See alsoKOCH,ROBERT.Kossel, Ludwig Karl Martin Leonhard Albrecht
(1853–1927) GermanChemist, Medical doctor Lud-
wigKarl Martin Leonhard Albrecht Kossel was born in
Rostock on September 16, 1853, the eldest son of
Albrecht Kossel, a merchant and Prussian consul, and
his wife Clara Jeppe. He attended the secondary school
in Rostock and went to the newly founded University
of Strassburg in 1872 to study medicine. He received
his doctor of medicine in 1878.
Kossel specialized in chemistry of tissues and cells
(physiological chemistry), and by the 1870s he had
begun his investigations into the constitution of the cell
nucleus. He isolated nucleoproteins from the heads of
fish sperm cells in 1879. By the 1890s he had focused
on the study of the proteins. In 1910 he received the
Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his contribu-
tions in cell chemistry and work on proteins.
Among his important publications are Unter-
suchungen über die Nukleine und ihre Spal-
tungsproducte (Investigations into the nucleins and190 Kocher, Theodor Emil