In October 1892, the Munich hygienist Max von Pettenkofer drank a flask of *Vibrio cholerae* sent to him by Koch's institute. Why?
Pettenkofer was the dominant European hygienist of his era and the principal defender of the 'localist' theory of cholera — that the bacterium alone was insufficient, and the disease required specific soil-and-groundwater conditions. He drank the flask publicly, with witnesses, to demonstrate that the bacterium was not enough. He didn't die. (His junior Emmerich drank a second flask and got mild diarrhoea.) Modern epidemiology says he was probably saved by stomach acid and a small dose. The germ theory won anyway. Pettenkofer shot himself in 1901.
Read the full story →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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