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Who discovered the bacteria that cause cholera?
Who discovered the bacteria that cause cholera?
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The Italian physician Filippo Pacini first discovered the bacterium that causes cholera in 1854, but Robert Koch is often credited with the discovery because he independently identified the bacterium in 1883.
The germ responsible for cholera was discovered twice: first by the Italian physician Filippo Pacini during an outbreak in Florence, Italy, in 1854, and then independently by Robert Koch in India in 1883, thus favoring the germ theory over the miasma theory of disease.
In the 19th century, there was extensive research on cholera: the disease was generally attributed to miasmatic causes, but this concept was replaced, between about 1850 and 1910, by the scientifically founded germ theory of disease. In 1883, Robert Koch identified the vibrion for the second time, after Filippo Pacini’s discovery in 1854: Koch isolated the comma bacillus in pure culture and explained its mode of transmission, solving an enigma that had lasted for centuries. The aim of this article is to reconstruct the different steps towards the explanation of cholera, paying particular attention to the events occurring in the pivotal year 1854.