186 



CHOLERA 



There is the same heroic note in the story of 

 the preventive treatment of cholera by Haffkine's 

 method ; one of the men in whom Pasteur seems to 

 live again. He began in 1889, under Pasteur's 

 guidance, to study the immunisation of animals 

 against the cholera-bacillus. Other men, of course, 

 were working on the same lines — Pfeiffer, Brieger, 

 Metchnikoff, Fischer. Gamalei'a, Klein, Wasser- 

 mann, and many more — and by 1892 the immuni- 

 sation of animals was proved up to the hilt. Then 

 came the advance from animals to men, from 

 laboratories to Indian cities, villages, and canton- 

 ments ; and here the honour is Haffkine's, and his 

 alone. Ferran's inoculations (Spain, 1885) had 

 failed. Haffkine, having tested his method on 

 himself and his friends, went to India, with 

 a commendatory letter from the British Govern- 

 ment : — 



" Researches on cholera, with special reference 

 to inoculation, were undertaken and carried on in 

 my laboratory, in the Pasteur Institute in Paris, 

 between 1889 and 1893. The experiments resulted 

 in the elaboration of the present method, which 

 when tried on animals was found to render them 

 resistant against every form of cholera-poisoning 

 otherwise fatal to them. 



" The physiological and pathological effect on 

 man was then studied on some sixty persons, mostly 

 medical and scientific men interested in the solution 

 of the problem. The effect was found to be harm- 

 less to health. The next step was to transfer the 

 operations to the East." (Haffkine's Report to the 

 Government of India, 1895.) 



