Editing Vibrio cholerae (section)

=== Rediscovery ===
The medical importance and relationship between the bacterium and the cholera disease was discovered by German physician [[Robert Koch]]. In August 1883, Koch, with a team of German physicians, went to Alexandria, Egypt, to investigate the cholera epidemic there.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Howard-Jones|first=N.|date=1984|title=Robert Koch and the cholera vibrio: a centenary|journal=British Medical Journal|volume=288|issue=6414|pages=379–381|doi=10.1136/bmj.288.6414.379|pmc=1444283|pmid=6419937}}</ref> Koch found that the intestinal mucosa of people who died of cholera always had the bacterium, yet he could not confirm if it was the causative agent. He moved to Calcutta (now Kolkata), India, where the epidemic was more severe. It was from here that he isolated the bacterium in a pure culture on 7 January 1884. He subsequently confirmed that the bacterium was a new species, and described it as "a little bent, like a comma."<ref name=":3" /> He reported his discovery to the German Secretary of State for the Interior on 2 February, and it was published in the ''Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift'' (''German Medical Weekly'').<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Robert|first=Koch|date=1884|title=Sechster Bericht der deutschen wissenschaftlichen Commission zur Erforschung der Cholera|url=https://www.scopus.com/record/display.uri?eid=2-s2.0-33748441571&txGid=8dfe522676542084e21a1178b5e3695a|journal=Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift|volume=10|pages=191–192}}</ref>

Although Koch was convinced that the bacterium was the cholera pathogen, he could not entirely procure critical evidence that the bacterium produced the symptoms in healthy subjects (an important element in what was later known as [[Koch's postulates]]). His experiment on animals using his pure bacteria culture did not lead to the appearance of the disease in any of the subjects, and he correctly deduced that animals are immune to the human pathogen. The bacterium was by then known as "the comma bacillus."<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Nair|first1=G. Balakrish|last2=Narain|first2=Jai P.|date=2010|title=From endotoxin to exotoxin: De's rich legacy to cholera|journal=Bulletin of the World Health Organization|volume=88|issue=3|pages=237–240|doi=10.2471/BLT.09.072504|pmc=2828792|pmid=20428396}}</ref> It was only in 1959, in Calcutta, that Indian physician [[Sambhu Nath De]] isolated the cholera toxin and showed that it caused cholera in healthy subjects, hence fully proving the bacterium-cholera relationship.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=De|first=S. N.|date=1959|title=Enterotoxicity of bacteria-free culture-filtrate of Vibrio cholerae|url=https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/13666809|journal=Nature|volume=183|issue=4674|pages=1533–1534|doi=10.1038/1831533a0|pmid=13666809|bibcode=1959Natur.183.1533D|s2cid=34139686|access-date=2021-04-04|archive-date=2021-05-26|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210526033610/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/13666809/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Nair|first1=G. Balakrish|last2=Takeda|first2=Yoshifumi|date=2011|title=Dr Sambhu Nath De: unsung hero|journal=The Indian Journal of Medical Research|volume=133|issue=2 |pages=127|pmc=3089041|pmid=21415484}}</ref>