Tuberculosis and Two Physicians (Robert Koch and Arthur Conan Doyle)

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William Bynum, The Case of Phantom Cure; Hungry for exposure, in 1890 the creator of Sherlock Holmes traveled to Berlin to write about a much-hyped cure for tuberculosis.
online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303802104579449640181119538
(book review on Thomas Goetz, The Remedy; Robert Koch, Arthur Conan Doyle and the Quest to Cure Tuberculosis. Gotham, 2014)

Note:
(a) Robert Koch
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Koch
(born in the town of Clausthal-Zellerfeld[, 99km from Hanover by car]; In July 1867, following his graduation from medical school, Koch married Emma Adolfine Josephine Fraatz, and the two had a daughter, Gertrude, in 1868; Koch’s marriage with Emma Fraatz ended in 1893 [age 50] , and later that same year, he married actress Hedwig Freiberg; Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1905; section 2 Research contributions)
(i) “MD” from University of Göttingen (1862-1866)  Nobel Prise
(ii) University of Göttingen
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_G%C3%B6ttingen
(Founded in 1734 by George II, King of Great Britain and Elector of Hanover)

George I hailed from Hanover, because Anne, Queen of Great Britain produced no heir. The last British monarch born outside Great Britain (in Hanover), George II was George I’s only son.
(iii) Göttingen
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6ttingen
(a university town in Lower Saxony, Germany[, not far from Dr Koch's hometown]; In 2011 the population was 116,052; “The origins of Göttingen lay in a village called Gutingi, first mentioned in a document in 953 AD. The city was founded northwest of this village, between 1150 and 1200 AD, and adopted its name”)
(iv) The German and Jewish (Ashkenazic) surname Koch: German Koch ‘cook’ (cognate with Latin coquus [noun masculine, meaning a cook])
(v) Thomas M Daniel, Pioneers of Medicine and Their Impact on Tuberculosis. University of Rochester Press, 2000, at 91
books.google.com/books?id=ipIrT1Hf-dYC&pg=PA91&lpg=PA91&dq=Hedwig+Freiberg&source=bl&ots=UtAEAxgg0V&sig=MRdHNm-sSzx22kHhcndx6lGV_sk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=O9BFU--JEsvNsQSluIL4BA&ved=0CD8Q6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=Hedwig%20Freiberg&f=false
("Robert and Emmy Koch's marriage slowly fell apart. * * * The following year [1889, that is, when Koch was 46] Koch met Hedwig Freiberg, a seventeen-year-old art student adn part-time actress")

(b) Arthur Conan Doyle
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Conan_Doyle
(1859 – 1930; Scottish; From 1876 to 1881 [when he received MB/CM] he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh Medical Schooi)
(i) MB CM (without a s;ash, that s how University of Glasgow spells it): Bachelor of Medicine, Master of Surgery
(ii) I have no idea how it is different from Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachelor_of_Medicine,_Bachelor_of_Surgery
(iii) University of Edinburgh Medical School
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Edinburgh_Medical_School
(section 9 Famous alumni: MD, MB CM [but not bachelor of surgery])
(iv) The Irish surname Doyle: “reduced [meaning the dropping of the Ó] Anglicized form of Gaelic Ó Dubhghaill ‘descendant of Dubhghall,’ a personal name composed of the elements dubh ‘black’ + gall ‘stranger’. This was used as a byname for Scandinavians, in particular to distinguish the darker-haired Danes from fair-haired Norwegians. Compare McDougall, McDowell [the last two also means ‘descendant of Dubhghall’--but instead of Ó, these two have ‘Mac’].”

(c) “Koch (1843-1910) * * * was the first to document the life cycle of the anthrax bacillus [in 1876, when daughter Gertrude was 8] * * * developed lasting improvements in methods for growing bacteria in the laboratory, and showed how autoclaving medical instruments could kill invading germs. The high point in his career came early, with his demonstration, in March 1882, of the tubercle bacillus, the organism that causes tuberculosis. Tuberculosis had long been assumed to be an inherited, constitutional disorder, since it was chronic and waxed and waned. Other infectious diseases, such as anthrax, smallpox and cholera, either killed quickly or eventually left the patient more or less well. Koch's discoveries changed our understanding of this leading killer in the 19th century, and he went on to find the organism that causes cholera, another greatly feared disease of the time.”
(i) autoclave
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoclave
(invented by Charles Chamberland [a French microbiologist] in 1879; The name comes from Greek auto-, ultimately meaning self, and Latin clavis meaning key—a self-locking device)
(ii)en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Koch
(section 2.5 Tuberculosis: tested his four postulates on tuberculosis using guinea pigs [not on mice of his daughter Gertrude, who was born in 1868, too old for that] and reported his finding in 1882)

(d) “Mr Goetz writes about the early Koch in heroic terms, describing how he was so obsessed with tracking down the anthrax bacillus that he even used his daughter's pet mice: ‘Gertrud grew concerned that she was losing all her pets.’ * * * But though Koch continued to work hard all his life, the second half of his career is less admirable. It began with his search for a cure for tuberculosis. He eventually called the remedy he devised, a form of lymph, ‘tuberculin.’  * * * Tuberculin didn't cure [contrary to Koch’s pronouncements], although it acquired a modest place as a test for whether a person had been exposed to the bacillus.”
(e) “Dr Arthur Conan Doyle * * * [published] the first Holmes adventure, ‘A Study in Scarlet’ (1887). That had made little splash, although the second, ‘The Sign of Four’ (1890), secured a larger audience.”

A Study in Scarlet
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Study_in_Scarlet
("The book's title derives from a speech given by Holmes to Doctor Watson on the nature of his work, in which he describes the story's murder investigation as his 'study in scarlet': "There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it”/  was the first work of detective fiction to incorporate the magnifying glass as an investigative tool [see illustration])

(f) “Conan Doyle himself always said that his model for his famous detective was one of his teachers in Edinburgh, Dr Joseph Bell, who was famous for being able to deduce much about his patients as soon as they walked through the door of his office.”

Joseph Bell
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Bell
(1837-1911)
(g) The second parallel in their lives [of Koch and Arthur Conan Doyle], as Mr Goetz recounts, is that their ends were clouded in controversy. Koch spent the last decades of his life globe-trotting with a second wife almost 30 years his junior, looking for tropical diseases to conquer. It brought him little success. As for Conan Doyle, although Sherlock Holmes bestowed fame and fortune, his fans were shocked by the late revelation that he believed in fairies. He had been duped by a photograph now known to have been faked. Conan Doyle's confessions were far removed from the ruthless logic always exhibited by Holmes in his many unforgettable exploits.”

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Conan_Doyle
(section 1.9 Spiritualism [with a photo]: “Sir Arthur became involved with Spiritualism to the extent that he wrote a Professor Challenger novel on the subject, The Land of Mist. The Coming of the Fairies (1922) appears to show that Conan Doyle was convinced of the veracity of the five Cottingley Fairies photographs (which decades later were exposed as a hoax). He reproduced them in the book, together with theories about the nature and existence of fairies and spirits. In The History of Spiritualism (1926), Doyle praised the psychic phenomena and spirit materialisations produced by Eusapia Palladino and Mina Crandon)