Octave gengou biography books

Octave Gengou (27 February 1875, Ouffet – 25 April 1957, Brussels) was a Belgian bacteriologist.

Their work led to the development of the complement-fixation test, a diagnostic technique that was used to detect the presence of infectious agents in the blood.

In , Jules Bordet along with Octave Gengou observed a small ovoid bacterium in the sputum of a 5-month old child suffering from pertussis, or whooping.

Octave Gengou (27 February , Ouffet – 25 April , Brussels) was a Belgian bacteriologist.

The organism was first isolated by Jules Bordet and Octave Gengou in In the 20th century, pertussis was one of the most common.

In , Jules Bordet and Octave Gengou first identified a small coccoid bacillus that was found in the sputum of active pertussis cases.

He researched with Jules Bordet the Bordetella pertussis bacteria.

Biography

At the age of 22, he obtained his doctorate at the University of Liège, later being named as deputy director at the Pasteur Institute of Brabant.

In 1945, he became professor emeritus at the University of Brussels.^[1]

Gengou worked at the Belgium Pasteur Institute in Brussels. With Jules Bordet he isolated Bordetella pertussis in pure culture in 1906 and declared it as the cause of whooping cough.^[2] In 1912, he developed the first whooping cough-vaccine.

Jules Bordet and Octave Gengou of the Pasteur Institute of Brussels are able to grow the pertussis bacterium in artificial media.

He also worked on various important fundamental research on a now common test for diseases (e.g. the "Wassermann test" of August von Wassermann).

He served as secretary general of the Oeuvre Nationale Belge contre la Tuberculose and as an honorary president of the Ligue nationale belge contre la Tuberc