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Filippo Pacini

5 stories mention Filippo Pacini on DeadlyCurious.

The Footnote June 24, 2026 · Florence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany

The Florentine Anatomist Who Found the Cholera Bacterium Thirty Years Before Anyone Listened

Filippo Pacini examined the intestinal tissue of cholera victims in Florence in 1854 — the same year [John Snow](/articles/john-snow-broad-street-pump) was mapping the Broad Street pump — and identified a comma-shaped bacterium he called *Vibrio cholerae*. The discovery was published in Italian, in an Italian journal, and was almost entirely ignored. [Robert Koch](/articles/robert-koch-cholera-1883) rediscovered the same organism in Egypt in 1883 and got the credit.

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The Footnote June 24, 2026 · University of Munich

The Munich Hygienist Who Drank a Cholera Flask in 1892 to Prove Koch Was Wrong

Max von Pettenkofer was the most prominent 19th-century German opponent of the germ theory of cholera. In 1892 he drank a flask of *Vibrio cholerae* sent to him by Robert Koch's institute. He did not die. He shot himself nine years later.

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The Footnote June 24, 2026 · Munich Institute of Hygiene

The German Hygienist Who Drank a Flask of Cholera to Prove Robert Koch Wrong

In October 1892 the Munich hygienist Max von Pettenkofer asked [Robert Koch's](/articles/robert-koch-cholera-1883) laboratory to send him a fresh culture of *Vibrio cholerae*. He drank approximately a billion organisms in a flask of beef broth, in front of academic witnesses, to demonstrate that the bacterium alone could not cause cholera. He survived the experiment. Nine years later he shot himself.

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The Cabinet June 23, 2026 · Jessore, Bengal (modern Bangladesh)

The First Global Cholera Pandemic and the Indonesian Volcano That Probably Started It

Cholera had been an endemic disease of the Ganges delta for centuries. In 1817 it suddenly became a global pandemic — moving across Asia, the Middle East, East Africa, and eventually Europe over six years. The trigger was probably the Tambora eruption of 1815 disrupting Bengali agriculture two years earlier.

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The Cabinet June 18, 2026 · Calcutta (modern Kolkata), India

The German Doctor Who Caught Cholera in a Bottle

Robert Koch went to Alexandria in 1883 to find the cause of cholera. He found it on the second day and confirmed it in Calcutta four months later. John Snow had been right thirty years earlier without ever seeing the bacterium.

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