Editing Anthrax (section)

=== Discovery ===
[[Robert Koch]], a German physician and scientist, first identified the bacterium that caused the anthrax disease in 1875 in [[Wolsztyn|Wollstein]] (now Wolsztyn, Poland).<ref name="pages 277-310"/><ref name="Brock">{{Cite book | veditors = Madigan M, Martinko J |title=Brock Biology of Microorganisms |edition=11th |publisher=Prentice Hall |year=2005 |isbn=978-0-13-144329-7}}</ref> His pioneering work in the late 19th century was one of the first demonstrations that [[Germ theory of disease|diseases could be caused by microbes]]. In a groundbreaking series of experiments, he uncovered the lifecycle and means of transmission of anthrax. His experiments not only helped create an understanding of anthrax but also helped elucidate the role of microbes in causing illness at a time when debates still took place over [[spontaneous generation#Spontaneous generation|spontaneous generation]] versus [[cell theory]]. Koch went on to study the mechanisms of other diseases and won the 1905 [[Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine]] for his discovery of the bacterium causing tuberculosis.<ref>{{cite web |title=The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1905 |url=https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1905/summary/ |website=The Nobel Prize |publisher=The Nobel Foundation |access-date=2021-10-04 |archive-date=23 May 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200523071846/https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1905/summary/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

Although Koch arguably made the greatest theoretical contribution to understanding anthrax, other researchers were more concerned with the practical questions of how to prevent the disease. In Britain, where anthrax affected workers in the wool, [[worsted]], [[hide (skin)|hide]]s, and [[Tanning (leather)|tanning]] industries, it was viewed with fear. [[John Henry Bell]], a doctor born & based in [[Bradford]], first made the link between the mysterious and deadly "woolsorter's disease" and anthrax, showing in 1878 that they were one and the same.<ref>{{cite journal |title=John Henry Bell, M.D., M.R.C.S|journal=British Medical Journal|date=22 September 1906|pages=735–36|pmc=2382239|volume=2|issue=2386|doi=10.1136/bmj.2.2386.735}}</ref> In the early 20th century, [[Friederich Wilhelm Eurich]], the [[Germans|German]] [[bacteriologist]] who settled in Bradford with his family as a child, carried out important research for the local Anthrax Investigation Board. Eurich also made valuable contributions to a [[Home Office]] Departmental Committee of Inquiry, established in 1913 to address the continuing problem of industrial anthrax.<ref>{{cite journal|title=Industrial Infection by Anthrax|journal=British Medical Journal|date=15 November 1913|page=1338|pmc=2346352|volume=2|issue=2759}}</ref> His work in this capacity, much of it collaboration with the factory inspector [[G. Elmhirst Duckering]], led directly to the [[Anthrax Prevention Act]] (1919).