1890

Koch announces in August discovery of tuberculin (extract of virulent tubercle bacilli) at 10th International Congress of Medicine (Berlin), uncritically accepted by Lister. Koch appoints Paul Ehrlich to run the tuberculosis department of Moabit Hospital, where Berlin city authorities had placed 150 beds at Koch’s disposal to test “tuberculin” (Bäumler, 50-51). In fall, construction begins on Koch’s “Institute of Infectious Diseases,” near Charité Hospital that is occupied by July, 1891. By early 1891, tuberculin believed to be of dubious therapeutic but inestimable diagnostic value (Brock, 198ff.).