How did Casimir Joseph Davaine's anthrax research help inspire Robert Koch?

Casimir Joseph Davaine’s research provided a critical foundation for Robert Koch’s work on anthrax. In 1863, Davaine reported that he could transmit the disease to healthy sheep by inoculating them with the blood of infected animals.1

Davaine observed microscopic, rod-shaped bodies in the blood of the diseased sheep and demonstrated that the animals did not contract the illness in the absence of these organisms. This evidence suggested that the rodlike bodies were the cause of the disease, a concept that helped inspire Koch to further investigate the natural history of anthrax. While Davaine’s findings were significant, the life cycle of the disease remained incomplete until Koch discovered that the bacteria could form dormant spores, which explained how the infection could persist in pastures for years. Koch’s subsequent experiments provided the first convincing proof of a direct causal relationship between a specific microorganism and a specific disease.1