Koch accepted at least two similar positions on German and British immigrant ships to Queensland and New South Wales 1877-1879.

[1] Dr Koch gained prominence locally for his medical skills, kindly disposition, and humanitarian work amongst Cairns families.

"Fever" - usually malaria or typhoid - became endemic in far north Queensland during the 1880s, especially on the mining fields, in the railway construction camps, and on the sugar plantations.

Not until 1897 did Major Surgeon Ronald Ross prove by scientific experiment the role of the mosquito anopheles farauti (indigenous to Cairns and all of north Queensland from Townsville northwards) in the transmission of malaria, and it was not until 1904 that RA O'Brien, who practised medicine in Cairns 1904-08, for the first time demonstrated malaria parasites microscopically in North Queensland.

Koch patented a fever mixture consisting of quinine dissolved in diluted sulphuric acid, designed both to treat malaria and to be used as a suppressive.

'Dr Koch's Celebrated Fever Mixture for Malaria', prepared by a Cairns chemist, proved highly effective.

It was marketed throughout the far north of Queensland and in Papua New Guinea, and is credited with containing the endemic malaria existing in Cairns prior to the Second World War.

He also visited fortnightly the Hambledon and Pyramid sugar plantations outside Cairns, which were run with South Sea Islands labour.

[1] Dr Koch died on 28 June 1901, aged 57 years, at his residence on the Esplanade at Cairns, and was interred in the McLeod Street Pioneer Cemetery the following day.

As it was to be located in the centre of the intersection of Abbott and Spence Streets in the heart of the town, a gas lamp was placed on its top.

[1] The memorial was still in the Townsville workshops in late May 1903 but was in place at the intersection of Abbott and Spence Streets by 13 June 1903, when it was unveiled by Major-General Sir Herbert Chermside, the Governor of Queensland.

This memorial immortalises the work of pioneering Cairns doctor Edward Albert Koch, in particular his treatment of malaria and early recognition of the role played by mosquitoes in transmitting the disease.