Georg Theodor August Gaffky (February 17, 1850 – September 23, 1918) was a Hanover

Hanover

Hanover or Hannover, on the river Leine, is the capital of the federal state of Lower Saxony , Germany and was once by personal union the family seat of the Hanoverian Kings of Great Britain, under their title as the dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg...

 born bacteriologist best known for identifying bacillus

Bacillus

Bacillus is a genus of Gram-positive, rod-shaped bacteria and a member of the division Firmicutes. Bacillus species can be obligate aerobes or facultative anaerobes, and test positive for the enzyme catalase. Ubiquitous in nature, Bacillus includes both free-living and pathogenic species...

 salmonella typhi as the cause of typhoid disease

Disease

A disease is an abnormal condition affecting the body of an organism. It is often construed to be a medical condition associated with specific symptoms and signs. It may be caused by external factors, such as infectious disease, or it may be caused by internal dysfunctions, such as autoimmune...

 in 1884.

Early life and career

Gaffky's parents were the shipping agent Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Gaffky, and Emma Schumacher. His medical studies at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 were completed in 1873 after an interruption by the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. His dissertation postulated a relationship between lead poisoning

Lead poisoning

Lead poisoning is a medical condition caused by increased levels of the heavy metal lead in the body. Lead interferes with a variety of body processes and is toxic to many organs and tissues including the heart, bones, intestines, kidneys, and reproductive and nervous systems...

 and kidney disease. He worked as an assistant at the Berlin Charité hospital and passed the state medical exams in 1875. He then worked as an army surgeon.

Gaffky worked as an assistant to Robert Koch

Robert Koch

Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch was a German physician. He became famous for isolating Bacillus anthracis , the Tuberculosis bacillus and the Vibrio cholerae and for his development of Koch's postulates....

 in Berlin. Under Koch's leadership, Gaffky and others developed bacteriological

Bacteriology

Bacteriology is the study of bacteria. This subdivision of microbiology involves the identification, classification, and characterization of bacterial species...

 protocols and achieved progress in identifying causes of infectious disease

Infectious disease

Infectious diseases, also known as communicable diseases, contagious diseases or transmissible diseases comprise clinically evident illness resulting from the infection, presence and growth of pathogenic biological agents in an individual host organism...

s.

Principal discoveries

Following Karl Joseph Eberth

Karl Joseph Eberth

Karl Joseph Eberth was a German pathologist and bacteriologist who was a native of Würzburg.In 1859 he earned his doctorate at the University of Würzburg, and became an assistant to anatomist Albert von Kölliker...

's description of a bacillus suspected as the cause of typhus, and Koch's independent work on the same organism, Gaffky dedicated years to improving culture methods to isolate the bacillus. He was able to produce cultures in gelatin and other hosts.

In 1884, Gaffky published results reporting that he had isolated the eberthella or Gaffky-Eberth bacillus in 26 of 28 cases of typhoid.

Gaffky was later part of an expedition to Egypt in which Koch identified transmission methods of cholera

Cholera

Cholera is an infection of the small intestine that is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The main symptoms are profuse watery diarrhea and vomiting. Transmission occurs primarily by drinking or eating water or food that has been contaminated by the diarrhea of an infected person or the feces...

. He became a government advisor during the 1892 cholera outbreak in Hamburg

Hamburg

-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

. He led an investigation of the 1897 outbreak of bubonic plague

Bubonic plague

Plague is a deadly infectious disease that is caused by the enterobacteria Yersinia pestis, named after the French-Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin. Primarily carried by rodents and spread to humans via fleas, the disease is notorious throughout history, due to the unrivaled scale of death...

in India.

Gaffky served as director of the Berlin Institute for Infectious Diseases from 1904–1913.