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

 

Summary (from the publisher): 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.

When Koch announced his cure for consumption, Arthur Conan Doyle, then a small-town doctor in England and sometime writer, went to Berlin to cover the event. Touring the ward of reportedly cured patients, he was horrified. Koch’s "remedy” was either sloppy science or outright fraud.

But to a world desperate for relief, Koch’s remedy wasn’t so easily dismissed. As Europe’s consumptives descended upon Berlin, Koch urgently tried to prove his case. Conan Doyle, meanwhile, returned to England determined to abandon medicine in favor of writing. In particular, he turned to a character inspired by the very scientific methods that Koch had formulated: Sherlock Holmes.

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.

 

 

Review: I received an advance uncorrected proof copy of this book as a Goodreads giveaway.

 

The Remedy tells the true tale of Robert Koch, one of Germany's most famous doctors in the late 1800s, supposed cure for tuberculosis. Ultimately Koch's ego led to his downfall as he was too anxious to be the doctor that said he had cured TB, and announced his findings to the world before he was confident that it was in fact a cure.

 

Robert Koch is responsible for many of the givens of today's lab work, including the use of the rapidly reproducing "white lab mouse" (27). In addition, he was the innovator behind microphotography of slides of specimens. He is well-known for protocols known today as "Koch's postulates" that contribute to clarity of methods and results in research (49). He was the researcher who realized that the use of "round plates with raised edges" were more effective for research - now known as the petri dish, "the very plate that continues to be used to this day in laboratories the world over" (71). Yet Koch was also known for his very public and heated battle for science supremacy with Louis Pasteur. Koch wished to be seen as the leading researcher, given all the respect and authority that that meant. And so he turned to tuberculosis to try to find a cure for a very well known and devastating disease.

 

In the nineteenth century, tuberculosis was an all too common killer. "In England, as much as a quarter of all deaths were due to consumption. In the United States, the disease was the leading cause of death; in German towns, tuberculosis was the second-largest killer, after gastrointestinal diseases - but when one includes deaths attributed to generic "lung" conditions, most of which are likely to have been TB, it accounts for a plurality of deaths by far" (xi). Koch believed he had found the remedy in a substance he referred to as "tuberculin," the scientific details about which he declined to elaborate. However, rather than a cure, Koch had found a substance that produced a reaction in the patient. Or in other words he succumbed to confirmation bias. "Koch wanted to believe his treatment was working, so he looked for evidence that it was" (173).

 

Meanwhile, an as yet unknown young doctor with aspirations of writing learned about Koch's potential remedy and asked to report on the findings for several publications. That doctor was Author Conan Doyle. "Conan Doyle is famous to us today as the creator of Sherlock Homes" (xix). While Koch's remedy was slowly being given to thousands of hopeful TB patients, Conan Doyle conducted the "first thorough appraisal of tuberculin, based on an examination of patients under treatment. It was a rigorous debunking, using Koch's own model of logic and analysis to reveal his remedy's weaknesses" (186).

 

I found this book very interesting, particularly since tuberculosis affected so many historical figures through the ages. However, I think non-fiction is succumbing to The Devil in the White City effect, where the writer tries to take two essentially disparate stories and connect them. The connection in this story, between Koch and Conan Doyle, seems too tenuous and too fleeting to necessitate a whole book devoted to the one time their paths crossed. However, on the other hand, it was fascinating to see two famous individuals' lives so narrowly intersect.

 

In addition, I felt that this book suffered from lengthy descriptions of medical and research protocol that was not necessary for the reader's understanding, and certainly not for the reader's benefit. For example, there is a lengthy segue about the "gold standard for medical research" or the "randomized clinical trial" (191). I could have done without this long passage that did not contribute to the plot or understanding of this book.

 

The greatest irony about Koch's sad downfall is that while he may not have found the remedy, his discoveries were a sort of remedy for tuberculosis nonetheless. Koch's discoveries about the causation of tuberculosis led to the introduction of means to prevent the spreading of the disease. "A pronounced drop-off in tuberculosis cases can be traced to the 1880s, when Koch's discovery began to spread" (208). However, he great medical gaffe is the more widely known legacy he left behind.

 

Stars: 3