Haffkine Tested Plague Vaccine Himself

In October 1896, bubonic plague struck Bombay, and the government asked Russian-born bacteriologist Waldemar Haffkine, developer of the first human cholera vaccine, to help. He established a makeshift laboratory in a corridor at Grant Medical College and produced a plague vaccine within three months, despite one assistant suffering a nervous breakdown and two others quitting. In January 1897, Haffkine tested the vaccine on himself before presenting the results to authorities. Officials then inoculated volunteers at Byculla jail, all of whom survived the epidemic, while seven inmates in the untreated control group died.

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