The first plague vaccine
AI-drafted · awaiting admin review
Was the world's first plague vaccine made and tested in Bombay in 1897?
India first (well documented)Medicine & health
Indian claim
The first vaccine against bubonic plague was developed in Bombay in 1896–97 in a makeshift laboratory at Grant Medical College, and tested at Byculla jail. The laboratory grew into today's Haffkine Institute in Mumbai.
Evidence for the Indian claim
- Haffkine arrived in Bombay on 7 October 1896, made a killed-bacteria vaccine and injected himself on 10 January 1897.
- In the Byculla jail trial, of 147 inoculated prisoners two caught plague and none died, while among 172 not inoculated twelve fell ill and six died.
- Indian staff and volunteers, and later millions of Indians who were vaccinated, were central to the work.
Commonly credited to
The vaccine was the work of Waldemar Haffkine, a scientist from Odessa trained at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, who worked for the Government of British India.
Evidence for the other claim
- Haffkine was not Indian, and the science drew on European bacteriology, including the discovery of the plague bacterium by Alexandre Yersin in Hong Kong in 1894.
What historians and scientists say
The world's first plague vaccine was created and first tested in India, by a foreign-born scientist working in Bombay. India can count it as an achievement made on its soil and with its people.