In the late 19th century deadly diseases such as tuberculosis and anthrax were unstoppable killers. Doctors were helpless to prevent or effectively treat their patients because nobody knew what caused the disease in the first place. It wasn’t until German scientist Robert Koch showed anthrax and other scourges were caused by specific types of bacteria that mankind began to win the war on disease. In addition to being a renowned researcher, Koch was also an important technical innovator. He was the first to develop an effective system for staining and photographing the microbes he studied under the microscope, the first to establish a scientific protocol to isolate and identify pathogens, and the first to use agar as a medium to grow bacterial cultures in the lab.
