Thursday, June 21, 2012

Factoid of the day

Why the Guinea pig is used as a guineapig?

Blame Dr. Robert Koch, the country doc who discovered the TB bacillus (and the guy the Koch postulate is named after).

Bred as a food source, guinea pigs were gentle, quiet, unperturbed by cages, and—by a fortunate coincidence, perhaps—prone to infectious disease. (You can give a Cavy full-blown tuberculosis with a single  Mycobacterium tuberculosis, says TB researcher David McMurray.*) By the time he was named to a prestigious professorship in Berlin, Koch was using guinea pigs by the armful.

the article goes on to mark the ups and downs of scientific theory in those days.

No comments: