Background
Georg Gaffky was born on February 17, 1850, in Hanover, Germany. He was the son of Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Gaffky, a shipping agent, and Emma Wilhelmine Mathilde Schumacher.
Unter den Linden 6, 10117 Berlin, Germany
Georg studied medicine at the University of Berlin.
biologist educator scientist bacteriologist
Georg Gaffky was born on February 17, 1850, in Hanover, Germany. He was the son of Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Gaffky, a shipping agent, and Emma Wilhelmine Mathilde Schumacher.
After attending a Gymnasium in Hannover, Georg studied medicine at the University of Berlin. His studies were interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War, however, he returned to the university to take the Doctor of Medicine in 1873, with a dissertation on the causal relation between chronic lead poisoning and kidney disease.
After graduating, Georg worked as an assistant at the Berlin Charité hospital and spent several years as a military surgeon posted to various garrisons. Gaffky’s career took a new turn in 1880 when he and Friedrich Löffler were ordered to assist Robert Koch at the recently founded imperial health office in Berlin. They were the first two of the brilliant group of assistants that Koch was assembling there. Under Koch’s tutelage, Gaffky participated in developing new bacteriological methods and in demonstrating the causes of infectious disease.
From the beginning of his work with Koch, Gaffky was drawn into a variety of researches at the public health laboratory. In 1881 he reported on experimentally produced septicemia in animals. Controverting Naegeli’s view that pathogenic bacteria might eventually arise through the accommodation and indefinite variability of common, previously harmless forms, Gaffky maintained that these disease-producing bacteria were specific and derived only from forms like themselves. He took part with Löffler in Koch’s work on steam disinfection and participated in the investigations on anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis.
Gaffky’s most important contribution, however, was in the isolation and culture of the bacillus that is the causative agent of typhoid fever. In 1880 Karl Joseph Eberth had seen and described a bacillus which he believed to be the cause of this disease, while Koch had independently observed the organism and photographed masses of the bacilli. But Eberth and Koch had been able to discern the bacillus in no more than half the cases of typhoid fever in which they had made their examinations. It was Gaffky’s hypothesis that this difficulty might be due in part to the culture methods employed, and for the next several years he sought ways to obtain the bacillus with high consistency in pure culture. To do so, it was necessary for him to differentiate between the causative agent of typhoid fever - or Typhus abdominalis, as he called it - and similar bacilli that might be present but represent secondary invaders of the diseased tissues.
The bacilli could be found in the mesenteric glands, spleen, liver, and kidneys of typhoid victims, sometimes in isolation, but more frequently grouped in masses or threadlike arrangements. Using various techniques, Gaffky grew cultures of the bacillus in solid nutrient gelatin, on the surface of boiled potatoes, in solidified sheep blood serum, in fluid serum, and in bouillon. He identified the bacillus and believed that he had demonstrated its spores. The organism was clearly visible in stained sections, while in fluid media the living bacillus exhibited a distinctive spontaneous movement and there was a characteristic motion of the bacillar threads. Despite this success in culturing the bacillus in different media, Gaffky was never able to cultivate the bacillus in living animals to produce the disease, although he tried repeatedly to achieve this further proof. In vain he experimentally fed infective material to Java monkeys, mice, guinea pigs, and other animals in an attempt to induce typhoid fever in them.
Still, Gaffky could report that he had with the highest probability isolated the etiologic agent of typhoid fever, for his examinations had disclosed the presence of the bacillus in twenty-six of twenty-eight cases of the disease and he published these results of his investigations in the Mittheilungen aus dem K. Gesundheitsamte in 1884.
In 1883-1884 Gaffky was a member of the expedition, sponsored by the German state and led by Koch, that was sent to Egypt and India to investigate the outbreak of cholera there. On the commission’s return, Koch reported the identification of the cholera bacillus and described the ways in which the infection was transmitted. Gaffky was responsible for preparing a detailed documentary report on the journey and its scientific results, published in the Arbeiten aus dem K. Gesundheitsamte in 1887. Its frontispiece showed a scene on the Hooghly River in which people were bathing, washing clothes, and carrying off the drinking water, while boats lay nearby. The text was illustrated with photomicrographs of Koch’s cultures of the vibrio and with maps and charts of epidemic statistics.
In 1885 Koch accepted the chair of hygiene at the University of Berlin and Gaffky succeeded him as director of the imperial health office. In 1888 Gaffky was appointed a professor of hygiene at the University of Giessen and undertook the direction of the new Hygienic Institute there. While he was at Giessen in 1892 cholera broke out in Hamburg, and Gaffky interrupted his teaching to advise the government in combating the epidemic. He was rector of the university from 1894 to 1895.
Gaffky returned to India - this time as leader of the government commission - in 1897, when bubonic plague was rife in Bombay and other centers. Koch was at this time in South Africa, investigating rinderpest. He later assumed leadership of the plague commission, and Gaffky collaborated in its report.
Gaffky left Giessen in 1904 when Koch suggested that he succeed him as director of the Institut für Infektionskrankheiten. He was an able administrator and under his guidance, the institute was enlarged by a division for tropical diseases, a rabies station, and a division for protozoology. He also served as co-editor of the Zeitschrift für Hygiene und Infektionskrankheiten.
In 1913 Gaffky left Berlin for the quieter surroundings of Hannover. He had intended to resume his own studies, but when World War I broke out he was again called to serve the government as adviser on hygiene and public health.