Isolation of Cholera Bacillus
- When
- 7 January 1884
- Where
- Calcutta (now Kolkata)
After being transferred to Calcutta, India, Robert Koch isolated the cholera bacterium in pure culture on 7 January 1884, confirming its role as the cause of the disease.
As the Egyptian outbreak declined, Koch was transferred to Calcutta (now Kolkata), India, where the epidemic was more severe. There he traced the source of cholera to the river Ganges and performed autopsies of almost 100 bodies, finding bacterial infection in each. He isolated the bacterium in pure culture on 7 January 1884, subsequently confirming it was a new species and describing it as "a little bent, like a comma."
Sources
- Robert Koch Wikipedia, revision of 2026-10-01
- Vibrio cholerae Wikipedia, revision of 2026-08-29
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.