Edward Albert Koch

Edward Albert Koch (1843 – 28 June 1901) was a German-born medical practitioner in Cairns, Queensland, Australia, known for his treatment of malaria and his early recognition of the role played by mosquitoes in transmitting the disease.

[1] 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.

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.

[1] 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.