During the surge of the deadliest and cruellest disease in history comes the unexpected encounter of two great men: one a pioneer of modern science, the other a pioneer of modern literature. In The Remedy, Thomas Goetz chronicles the riveting story of Robert Koch, a provincial doctor turned revolutionary scientist whose kitchen-sink discoveries inspired a new age of medicine - and ultimately aroused the interest and then the suspicion of another ambitious doctor, Arthur Conan Doyle.The account begins in 1875, when a diagnosis of tuberculosis or consumption, was a death sentence. Doctors had little in their arsenal for treating this cunning disease and were even less certain about what caused it. But a scientific revolution was brewing. Koch, armed with but a microscope and a notebook, began to methodically pursue these things called 'germs'. His biggest discovery - one that would push medicine out of the dark ages - was of the bacteria that caused tuberculosis. After the accolades and honors, Koch set his sights on a greater glory: not just to identify the cause but to create a cure.And then, he had it. When Koch announced his remedy for tuberculosis in 1890, euphoria swept the globe. Physician and aspiring writer Arthur Conan Doyle joined the throngs racing to Berlin for the public demonstration. But amid the frenzy over Koch's remedy, Conan Doyle quietly toured the wards of treated patients. He was staggered by what he found: Koch's remedy was either sloppy science or outright fraud.Conan Doyle has no choice but to accuse one of the world's greatest scientists of an unfathomable error. The question was this: Whom would the world believe?The Remedy, is a stunning tale of ambition and hubris, of discovery and deceit. It chronicles the profound shift in medical science from the nineteenth century of cod-liver oil and leeches to the twentieth century of microscopes and antibiotics. And it vividly explores how modern medicine emerges, not as the inevitable march of progress but as a lurching tumult of failed experiments and petty rivalries.In a brilliant interweaving of scientific and literary history, Goetz vividly shows that Koch and Conan Doyle shared more than a chance meeting: they were collaborators in the new age of medicine. What Koch proved in his laboratory Conan Doyle brought to the world through his literature - especially through his new scientific detective, Sherlock Holmes. As The Remedy makes clear, without Robert Koch, Sherlock Holmes would never have existed.
...MoreReview Paul H. Mason (2015) Review of "The Remedy: Robert Koch, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the Quest to Cure Tuberculosis". Health and History (pp. 106-108).
Similar Citations
Article
Gradmann, Christoph;
(2000)
Money and Microbes: Robert Koch, Tuberculin and the Foundation of the Institute for Infectious Diseases in Berlin in 1891
(/isis/citation/CBB000770042/)
Article
Schlich, Thomas;
(2000)
Linking Cause and Disease in the Laboratory: Robert Koch's Method of Superimposing Visual and “Functional” Representations of Bacteria
(/isis/citation/CBB000770041/)
Book
Gradmann, Christoph;
(2009)
Laboratory Disease: Robert Koch's Medical Bacteriology
(/isis/citation/CBB001020408/)
Article
Gradmann, Christoph;
(2008)
Alles eine Frage der Methode: Zur Historizität der Kochschen Postulate, 1840--2000
(/isis/citation/CBB001220562/)
Article
Mendelsohn, J. Andrew;
(2002)
`Like All That Lives': Biology, Medicine and Bacteria in the Age of Pasteur and Koch
(/isis/citation/CBB000501108/)
Article
Lugo-Márquez, Sara;
(2013)
Una perspectiva heterodoxa de la historia de los medicamentos. Dinámicas de inclusión-exclusión de los sueros antituberculosos Ravetllat-Pla en la España del primer tercio del Siglo XX
(/isis/citation/CBB001320246/)
Article
Tulodziecki, Dana;
(2007)
Breaking the Ties: Epistemic Significance, Bacilli, and Underdetermination
(/isis/citation/CBB000830397/)
Article
Hawgood, Barbara J.;
(2007)
Albert Calmette (1863--1933) and Camille Guérin (1872--1961): The C and G of BCG Vaccine
(/isis/citation/CBB000831643/)
Article
Hawgood, Barbara J.;
(2007)
Waldemar Mordecai Haffkine, CIE (1860--1930): Prophylactic Vaccination against Cholera and Bubonic Plague in British India
(/isis/citation/CBB000831622/)
Article
Amir Teicher;
(2020)
Medical Bacteriology and Medical Genetics, 1880–1940: A Call for Synthesis
(/isis/citation/CBB796702758/)
Book
Alan I. Marcus;
(2018)
Malignant Growth: Creating the Modern Cancer Research Establishment, 1875–1915
(/isis/citation/CBB026111848/)
Book
Michael Dwyer;
(2018)
Strangling Angel: Diphtheria and Childhood Immunization in Ireland
(/isis/citation/CBB799026134/)
Article
Bowen, Elliott;
(2013)
Limits of the Lab: Diagnosing “Latent Gonorrhea,” 1872--1910
(/isis/citation/CBB001252857/)
Article
Gradmann, Christoph;
(2004)
A Harmony of Illusions: Clinical and Experimental Testing of Robert Koch's Tuberculin, 1890--1900
(/isis/citation/CBB000501619/)
Article
Ernesto Damiani;
(2023)
Medical Conan Doyle-Leucocytes, Bacteria and Phagocytosis Before Metchnikoff
(/isis/citation/CBB040207575/)
Article
Santer, Melvin;
(2010)
Joseph Lister: First Use of a Bacterium as a “Model Organism” to Illustrate the Cause of Infectious Disease of Humans
(/isis/citation/CBB001022701/)
Chapter
Gausemeier, Bernd;
(2013)
Borderlands of Heredity: The Debate about the Hereditary Susceptibility to Tuberculosis, 1882--1945
(/isis/citation/CBB001500049/)
Book
Jones, Greta;
Malcolm, Elizabeth;
(1999)
Medicine, disease, and the State in Ireland, 1650-1940
(/isis/citation/CBB000110599/)
Book
Abrams, Jeanne;
(2009)
Dr. Charles David Spivak: A Jewish Immigrant and the American Tuberculosis Movement
(/isis/citation/CBB001021022/)
Article
Carey, Mark;
(2014)
Climate, Medicine, and Peruvian Health Resorts
(/isis/citation/CBB001421215/)
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Journal of Medical Biography
Science, Technology and Human Values
Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science
Medizinhistorisches Journal
Be the first to comment!