person
Robert Koch
Koch
also: Кох, кохин, the Koch cure, Koch's remedy
Robert Koch (1843-1910), German bacteriologist and discoverer of the tuberculosis bacillus, whose November 1890 announcement of a tuberculin-based "cure" (referred to in this letter as "the Koch cure"/"Koch's remedy," and, in \S5, adjectivally as "кохин") set off a wave of public excitement across Europe and Russia in the winter of 1890-91, followed within a year or two by disillusionment once the remedy's real limits and dangers became clear. Chekhov, writing as a trained physician just back from Sakhalin, takes a measured, professionally skeptical position here: he credits the underlying medical progress the discovery represents but doubts the specific claim that the cure has any effect on cancer, and by \S13 reports that Moscow medical opinion itself is largely unconvinced.
Reading notes
- To V. O. Kononovich, 27 February 1891. Moscow. §6 Koch's remedy has failed utterly in Russia
Robert Koch's tuberculin cure, announced in November 1890 to enormous international excitement, had by early 1891 already begun to founder as clinical results across Europe proved disappointing and its side effects (sometimes fatal) became apparent; Chekhov, writing as a physician, registers the collapse in Russia as settled fact rather than news -- see also his more measured, professionally skeptical assessment of the same cure in the earlier letter.