24 March - Robert Koch announced discovered the cause of tuberculosis

 

On 24 March 1882, Robert Koch announced to the Berlin Physiological Society that he had discovered the cause of tuberculosis. Three weeks later, on April 10, he published an article entitled "The Etiology of Tuberculosis". In 1884, in a second paper with the same title, he first expounded "Koch's postulates," which have since become basic to studies of all infectious diseases. He had observed the bacillus in association with all cases of the disease, had grown the organism outside the body of the host, and had reproduced the disease in a susceptible host inoculated with a pure culture of the isolated organism.