Uneasy Bedfellows: Science and Politics in the Refutation of Koch's Bacterial Theory of Cholera

Introduction

Six large cholera epidemics were said to have occurred in Europe between 1830 and the First World War. A great deal of research has been published on the first four, especially the first, and on associated efforts to improve water and sewage systems during this time. ¹ Important investigations of the last two epidemics have been published by Richard Evans and Frank Snowden: Evans mainly discusses the cholera epidemic in Hamburg in the 1890s, and Snowden, the cholera epidemic in Naples occurring around 1910, although both works also cover epidemics in the 1880s, particularly in southern France and Italy. ²

However, a fifth cholera epidemic of the 1880s, first confined to Egypt but then spreading to Italy, southern France, and Spain, has attracted little in-depth scholarly attention, apart from the works of William Coleman, Norman Howard-Jones, and Anne Hardy. ³ It seems as if the years 1883-84 in particular are an air pocket in the research, although some authors--for example, David Arnold, Mark Harrison, Sheldon Watts, and Jeremy D. Isaacs--give us excellent descriptions of the related issue of sanitation in British India during the second half of the nineteenth century. ⁴ Yet understanding this epidemic, and particularly the British response at the time, is especially important for three reasons.

First, a major difference between conditions at the time of the earlier epidemics and in the 1880s is the presence of the Suez Canal. The cholera in Egypt in 1883 was the first outbreak to occur after the completion of the canal, and the cause of that epidemic was alleged by some of the European powers to be English ships coming into the Mediterranean Sea from India via the canal.

Second, while during the four earlier epidemics the residents of Britain, France, and the German lands had all suffered cholera themselves, at the time of the epidemic in Egypt these three powers were still free of cholera and could afford to dispatch research commissions to study the disease. In this time of imperialism, it is important from the viewpoint of the development of international sanitation that the three big powers almost simultaneously sent teams of investigators to Egypt, each of which was laboring under different national expectations.

Third, from the viewpoint of bacteriology, cholera in 1883-84 is interesting because these were critical years for the identification of the cholera germ. At this time the German microbiologist Robert Koch was still in the process of formulating his famous postulates for determining a germ source for a disease--and in fact, these met with theoretical difficulty specifically in relation to the cholera germ.

Peter Baldwin has published an illuminating overview of the ways in which European nations reacted to the ever-present threat of epidemic contagion during 1830-1930. ⁵ As for the British reaction to the fifth cholera epidemic in particular, Coleman refers to Koch's commissions to Egypt and India in 1883-84, and he observes that the British were doing very little in response to the new epidemic. ⁶ However, there is evidence that the British were in fact making an effort to deal with the problem; for example, William Guyer Hunter was dispatched to study the cholera in Egypt and his final report was published in the British Command Papers in 1883. ⁷ A paper published in the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science in February 1886, entitled "The Official Refutation of Dr. Robert Koch's Theory of Cholera and Commas" (which does not seem to have been mentioned elsewhere in the literature), gives an enlightening view of the British response by bringing the relationship between bacteriology and the social, economic, and political situation of the time into sharp focus. ⁸ A close examination of "The Official Refutation" and related documents, therefore, contributes to previous research on the interaction...