1901 - 2 .] Plague Research Laboratory of Government of India. 113 
The Plague Research Laboratory of the Government of 
India, Parel, Bombay. By W. B. Bannerman, M.D., 
B.Sc., Major, Indian Medical Service, Superintendent of the 
Laboratory. Communicated by Prof. C. Hunter Stewart. 
(Read February 17, 1902.) 
Before beginning the account of the present state of the Plague 
Research Laboratory, it may be interesting to glance rapidly at the 
history of Mr W. M. Haffkine, C.I.E., its originator and present 
Director- in-Chief. 
After several years of work in the Pasteur Institute, this scientist 
succeeded in elaborating a vaccine which effectually protected the 
lower animals from attacks of cholera artificially induced in them, 
and he was naturally anxious to try its efficacy in human beings. 
Mr Haffkine had originally intended to visit Saigon for this purpose, 
but ascertaining from Lord Dufferin, who was then British Ambas- 
sador in Paris, that he 'would have a better field for his researches 
in India, he, through his influence, obtained the necessary intro- 
ductions, and began work in Calcutta in 1893. It is therefore to 
this eminent statesman that India owes the presence of the man 
who has saved thousands of her children from cholera and plague. 
The results obtained by the inoculations against cholera were so 
encouraging that the tea-planters in Assam invited Mr Haffkine 
to visit the tea-gardens to operate on their coolies, and Government 
were induced to help financially. 
Three years after his arrival in India, plague broke out, and the 
Government of India sent Mr Haffkine to Bombay with instructions 
to investigate the cause of the outbreak and to devise if possible 
some method of dealing with this new and terrible disease, similar 
to that which had so impressed them in the case of cholera. He 
reached Bombay on the 7th of October 1896, about a fortnight 
after plague had been officially declared to exist there, and next day 
began work in a room in the Petit Laboratory of Grant Medical 
College. His laboratory consisted of one room and a corridor, and 
his staff of one native clerk and three peons or messengers. It. 
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