Were Kochs criteria indeed safe-proof for causation? Did the criteria satisfy forensic toxicology and forensic medicine?
• At the same time there were a number of infectious agents which did not meet all the criteria and yet which Koch felt were strongly implicated in the causation of the disease. • These included the bacteria isolated from typhoid fever, diphtheria, leprosy, relapsing fever, and Asiatic cholera. • After being fully isolated from the body and repeatedly grown in pure culture, it can induce the disease anew. • The major problem of fulfillment was the inability “to produce the disease anew” in an experimental host. FORENSIC TOXICOLOGY, FORENSIC MEDICINE AND PHYSICIANS DECIDED: Koch’s Criteria Not A Check Box for Causation • Another problem limiting the application of the Henle-Koch postulates was the inability to grow many presumed human pathogens in the laboratory. • This applied to many parasitic diseases such as malaria, as well as to leprosy. • Thus, even at the time they were presented, the Henle-Koch postulates were never recommended as rigid criteria of causation and failed to apply
