The beginning of the modern era of immunisation

A fearful mother

On the morning of July 4, 1885, Joseph Meister, a nine-year-old boy from Alsace, France, was bitten by a dog. Not once or twice, but for a total of 14 times. The boy was bitten in his hands, legs, and thighs, and some of the wounds were so deep that Meister had trouble walking.

It was another 12 hours before Meister was treated by a local doctor. The serious wounds were cauterized with doses of carbolic acid. While the bites and the ensuing wounds were terrifying, what terrified Meister’s mother the most was the fear of rabies.

Joseph Meister in 1885.
| Photo Credit:
Wikimedia Commons

Even though rabies was rather rare in 19th Century France, Meister’s mother didn’t want to take any chances. This was because the shocking symptoms of rabies and the fact that the disease is always fatal once the clinical symptoms appear had captured the attention of the people.

Fearful for her son’s life, Meister’s mother took him to Paris as she had heard about a scientist who was working on a cure for rabies. On reaching Paris, she reached out and made inquiries as to how to find the French chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur. On being told to go straight to his laboratory, Meister’s mother did just that.

A vaccine for rabies

Before we jump to July 6, the day Meister was inoculated with rabies vaccine, we’ll have to first find out how Pasteur arrived at the vaccine. Meister’s mother had heard it right as Pasteur was indeed toiling hard to develop a rabies vaccine.

By 1880, Pasteur had perfected his experimental method of studying infectious diseases, their prevention, and their treatment by immunisation. He had decided to apply it to rabies, a disease that affects both humans and animals.

Pasteur’s initial efforts were focussed on isolating the cause of the disease, as he had done for other diseases previously. But as rabies is cause by a virus, it remained invisible and his efforts proved to be futile. This was because the microscopes of the time didn’t have the necessary resolution to make viruses visible. The rabies virus, in fact, was first observed only in 1962, following the development of the electron microscope.

Infects the central nervous system

Pasteur and his collaborator Emile Roux – a physician and bacteriologist who was also the co-founder of the Pasteur Institute later on – knew that rabies is a disease that infects the central nervous system. They had an idea of inoculating part of a rabid dog’s brain directly into another dog’s brain, but the inoculated dog died subsequently.

Portrait of Louis Pasteur.
| Photo Credit:
WELLCOME LIBRARY, LONDON / Wikimedia Commons

The experimenters switched to rabbits as they were easier to handle and first produced a vaccine with stable virulence. Pasteur then suspended sections of spines of rabid rabbits in flasks where they were exposed to the action of air in a moisture-free atmosphere. The level of virulence reduced gradually before disappearing completely.

Rabid dogs were administered these spinal fluid preparations. The process was repeated, with preparations of increased virulence. As they didn’t develop rabies, Pasteur had developed a protocol to fight the disease successfully.

Along with Roux and French microbiologist Charles Chamberland, Pasteur announced the discovery to the French Academy of Science on February 25, 1884. Once the appointed study commission had assessed the method’s efficacy, the Academy deemed it conclusive and approved it. Pasteur, however, was wary of moving on to human trials.

The moral dilemma

It was under these circumstances that Meister’s mother brought her nine-year-old to Pasteur. Pasteur was in two minds himself and was confronted with a moral dilemma. On the one hand, Meister might die if there was no medical intervention. On the other hand, what Pasteur had at his disposal was a vaccine that worked for dogs. Without human trials, there was no saying that it would work for the child. Worse, it could even be useless or even potentially harmful for humans.

Pasteur’s team was also divided on this. Roux was on the side that didn’t want to administer the rabies vaccine to Meister, as it had been tested only on dogs and rabbits. On the other side were French physicians Alfred Vulpain and Jacques Joseph Grancher, who believed that there had to be an intervention given the case in their hands.

In the end, Pasteur went with the advice of the doctors. “Since the death of the child appeared inevitable, I resolved, though not without great anxiety, to try the method which had proved consistently successful on the dogs,” he had said later on.

As Pasteur wasn’t a physician himself, the task of inoculating Meister fell upon Grancher. On the morning of July 6, Grancher administered the first dose of rabies vaccine. In the 10 days that followed, Meister received 12 more doses from Grancher, each one progressively fresher and hence more virulent

The outcome was obvious in less than a month. Meister had been saved, never developed rabies, and was now the first human being to receive vaccination against rabies. The first rabies vaccination was a success.

The second success

Pasteur, however, still decided to stay silent about his success. When there was a second success though, the news went viral.

On this occasion, a young 15-year-old shepherd had been severely bitten by a rabid dog. He had thrown himself at the animal in order to allow six other young shepherds to escape. When Jean-Baptiste Jupille arrived at Pasteur’s laboratory in September 1885, the latter had no dilemma about administering his treatment. Just like in Meister’s case, the treatment turned out to be a success again and the news of the achievement spread all around the world.

The breakthrough had far-reaching implications as people from around the world flocked the premises. A dedicated vaccination centre that doubled as a research and learning centre was soon set up and the Pasteur Institute was officially thrown open three years later in 1888.

The fact that all these developments came at a time when there was no formal theory of immunisation meant that Pasteur’s work set the ground for others to follow. He not only saved many lives from rabies, but also laid the foundation for modern vaccinology and our understanding of infectious diseases.

As for Meister, he was hired by Pasteur himself later on to work as a concierge at the Pasteur Institute. He worked there for several decades until World War II broke out, dying aged 64 on June 24, 1940.

Published – July 06, 2025 12:55 am IST