The Remedy: Robert Koch, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the Quest to Cure Tuberculosis by Thomas Goetz

The Remedy: Robert Koch, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the Quest to Cure Tuberculosis
by Thomas Goetz

The riveting history of tuberculosis, the world’s most lethal disease, the two men whose lives it tragically intertwined, and the birth of medical science.

In 1875, tuberculosis was the deadliest disease in the world, accountable for a third of all deaths. A diagnosis of TB—often called consumption—was a death sentence. Then, in a triumph of medical science, a German doctor named Robert Koch deployed an unprecedented scientific rigor to discover the bacteria that caused TB. Koch soon embarked on a remedy—a remedy that would be his undoing.

Capturing the moment when mystery and magic began to yield to science, The Remedy chronicles the stunning story of how the germ theory of disease became a true fact, how two men of ambition were emboldened to reach for something more, and how scientific discoveries evolve into social truths.

Part history, part mystery, the book chronicles the work of Robert Koch, a small town doctor who, through his discovery of the germ that causes tuberculosis, would find himself hailed as a hero. But then he would turn his attentions to finding a cure. Hubris would be his downfall.

Arthur Conan Doyle didn't have a lot to do with Robert Koch, or his efforts to find a cure for tuberculosis. But that search did have a lot to do with Doyle becoming the writer that he became. A doctor, himself, Doyle would be heavily influenced by Koch's methodical procedure. He would give that same precise methodology to his creation, Sherlock Holmes.

The book covers both men's lives and the fame that would come their way. How each man was affected by that fame, however transitory for one, and how they handled it, is just as interesting. As was the fight to prove the existence of bacteria to a disbelieving public. The irony that we're still fighting to "prove" what science has already proven, is hard to miss.

And while Robert Koch has become little more than a footnote in history, Conan Doyle's Sherlock is still making news. Still, or maybe because of it, the book makes for compelling reading.