Edmond Nocard

In 1883, he traveled to Egypt with Roux, Straus, and Thuiller, in order to study an outbreak of cholera there, but they were unable to isolate the germ responsible for the disease.

In the next three years, Nocard demonstrated his great skills in laboratory work in the new science of bacteriology by developing a number of new techniques, such as methods of harvesting blood serum, new culture media for the bacillus of tuberculosis, the introduction of anesthesia of large animals with intravenous chloral hydrate, as well as for controlling tetanic convulsions.

His scientific and academic victories were rewarded, in 1887, with the title of director of the School, and chair of infectious diseases, and, in 1888, with an invitation to become a member to the first editorial board of the Annals of the Pasteur Institute.

From 1892 to 1896, he strived to convince the medical and general public, in a series of communications, conferences, booklets, and demonstrations, that the use of the tuberculin of Robert Koch could provide the foundations for the prevention of bovine tuberculosis.

It causes nocardiosis, a disease which manifests itself mainly in animals of economic importance, such as bovine farcy, for which he discovered the first Nocardia, named by him initially as Streptothrix farcinica.

Edmond Nocard