KOCH, ROBERT (1843–1910), German bacteriologist, was born at Klausthal, Hanover, on the 11th of December 1843. He studied medicine at Göttingen, and it was while he was practising as a physician at Wollstein that he began those bacteriological researches that made his name famous. In 1876 he obtained a pure culture of the bacillus of anthrax, announcing a method of preventive inoculation against that disease seven years later. He became a member of the Sanitary Commission at Berlin and a professor at the School of Medicine in 1880, and five years later he was appointed to a chair in Berlin University and director of the Institute of Health. In 1882, largely as the result of the improved methods of bacteriological investigation he was able to elaborate, he discovered the bacillus of tuberculosis; and in the following year, having been sent on an official mission to Egypt and India to study the aetiology of Asiatic cholera, he identified the comma bacillus as the specific organism of that malady. In 1890 great hopes were aroused by the announcement that in tuberculin he had prepared an agent which exercised an inimical influence on the growth of the tubercle bacillus, but the expectations that were formed of it as a remedy for consumption were not fulfilled, though it came into considerable vogue as a means of diagnosing the existence of tuberculosis in animals intended for food. At the Congress on Tuberculosis held in London in 1901 he maintained that tuberculosis in man and in cattle is not the same disease, the practical inference being that the danger to men of infection from milk and meat is less than from other human subjects suffering from the disease. This statement, however, was not regarded as properly proved, and one of its results was the appointment of a British Royal Commission to study the question. Dr Koch also investigated the nature of rinderpest in South Africa in 1896, and found means of combating the disease. In 1897 he went to Bombay at the head of a commission formed to investigate the bubonic plague, and he subsequently undertook extensive travels in pursuit of his studies on the origin and treatment of malaria. He was summoned to South Africa a second time in 1903 to give expert advice on other cattle diseases, and on his return was elected a member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences. In 1906–1907 he spent eighteen months in East Africa, investigating sleeping-sickness. He died at Baden-Baden of heart-disease on the 28th of May 1910. Koch was undoubtedly one of the greatest bacteriologists ever known, and a great benefactor of humanity by his discoveries. Honours were showered upon him, and in 1905 he was awarded the Nobel prize for medicine.
Among his works may be mentioned: Weitere Mitteilungen über ein Heilmittel gegen Tuberkulose (Leipzig, 1891); and Reiseberichte über Rinderpest, Bubonenpest in Indien und Afrika, Tsetse- oder Surra-Krankheit, Texasfieber, tropische Malaria, Schwarzwasserfieber (Berlin, 1898). From 1886 onwards he edited, with Dr Karl Flügge, the Zeitschrift für Hygiene und Infektionskrankheiten (published at Leipzig). See Loeffler, “Robert Koch, zum 60ten Geburtstage” in Deut. Medizin. Wochenschr. (No. 50, 1903).
KOCH, a tribe of north-eastern India, which has given its name to the state of Kuch Behar (q.v.). They are probably of
Mongolian stock, akin to the Mech, Kachari, Garo and Tippera
tribes, and originally spoke, like these, a language of the Bodo
group. But since one of their chiefs established a powerful
kingdom at Kuch Behar in the 16th century they have gradually
become Hinduized, and now adopt the name of Rajbansi (= “of
royal blood”). In 1901 the number in Eastern Bengal and
Assam was returned at nearly 212 millions.
KOCK, CHARLES PAUL DE (1793–1871), French novelist, was born at Passy on the 21st of May 1793. He was a posthumous
child, his father, a banker of Dutch extraction, having been a
victim of the Terror. Paul de Kock began life as a banker’s clerk.
For the most part he resided on the Boulevard St Martin, and
was one of the most inveterate of Parisians. He died in Paris
on the 27th of April 1871. He began to write for the stage
very early, and composed many operatic libretti. His first
novel, L’Enfant de ma femme (1811), was published at his own
expense. In 1820 he began his long and successful series of
novels dealing with Parisian life with Georgette, ou la mère du
Tabellion. His period of greatest and most successful activity
was the Restoration and the early days of Louis Philippe. He
was relatively less popular in France itself than abroad, where he
was considered as the special painter of life in Paris. Major
Pendennis’s remark that he had read nothing of the novel kind
for thirty years except Paul de Kock, “who certainly made him
laugh,” is likely to remain one of the most durable of his testimonials,
and may be classed with the legendary question of a
foreign sovereign to a Frenchman who was paying his respects,
“Vous venez de Paris et vous devez savoir des nouvelles.
Comment se porte Paul de Kock?” The disappearance of the
grisette and of the cheap dissipation described by Henri Murger
practically made Paul de Kock obsolete. But to the student of
manners his portraiture of low and middle class life in the first
half of the 19th century at Paris still has its value.
The works of Paul de Kock are very numerous. With the exception of a few not very felicitous excursions into historical romance and some miscellaneous works of which his share in La Grande ville, Paris (1842), is the chief, they are all stories of middle-class Parisian life, of guinguettes and cabarets and equivocal adventures of one sort or another. The most famous are André le Savoyard (1825) and Le Barbier de Paris (1826).
His Mémoires were published in 1873. See also Th. Trimm, La Vie de Charles Paul de Kock (1873).
KODAIKANAL, a sanatorium of southern India, in the Madura
district of Madras, situated in the Palni hills, about 7000 ft.
above sea-level; pop. (1901), 1912, but the number in the hot
season would be much larger. It is difficult of access, being
44 m. from a railway station, and the last 11 m. are impracticable
for wheeled vehicles. It contains a government observatory,
the appliances of which are specially adapted for the study of
terrestrial magnetism, seismology and solar physics.
KODAMA, GENTARO, Count (1852–1907), Japanese general, was born in Choshu. He studied military science in Germany, and was appointed vice-minister of war in 1892. He became governor-general of Formosa in 1900, holding at the same time the portfolio of war. When the conflict with Russia became imminent in 1903, he gave up his portfolio to become vice-chief of the general staff, a sacrifice which elicited much public applause.
Throughout the Russo-Japanese War (1904–5) he served
as chief of staff to Field Marshal Oyama, and it was well understood
that his genius guided the strategy of the whole campaign,
as that of General Kawakami had done in the war with China
ten years previously. General Kodama was raised in rapid
succession to the ranks of baron, viscount and count, and his
death in 1907 was regarded as a national calamity.
KODUNGALUR (or Cranganur), a town of southern India,
in Cochin state, within the presidency of Madras. Though now
a place of little importance, its historical interest is considerable.
Tradition assigns to it the double honour of having been the first
field of St Thomas’s labours (A.D. 52) in India and the seat of
Cheraman Perumal’s government. The visit of St Thomas is
generally considered mythical; but it is certain that the Syrian
Church was firmly established here before the 9th century
(Burnell), and probably the Jews’ settlement was still earlier.
The latter, in fact, claim to hold grants dated A.D. 378. The
cruelty of the Portuguese drove most of the Jews to Cochin. Up
to 1314, when the Vypin harbour was formed, the only opening
in the Cochin backwater, and outlet for the Periyar, was at
Kodungalur, which must then have been the best harbour on the
coast. In 1502 the Syrian Christians invoked the protection
of the Portuguese. In 1523 the latter built their first fort there,
and in 1565 enlarged it. In 1661 the Dutch took the fort, the
possession of which for the next forty years was contested
between this nation, the zamorin, and the raja of Kodungalur.
In 1776 Tippoo seized the stronghold. The Dutch recaptured
it two years later, and, having ceded it to Tippoo in 1784, sold
it to the Travancore raja, and again in 1789 to Tippoo, who
destroyed it in the following year. The country round Kodungalur
now forms an autonomous principality, tributary to the
raja of Cochin.
