LifeIn October 1896, an epidemic of bubonic plague struck Bombay (now Mumbai) and the government asked Haffkine to help. He embarked upon the development of a vaccine in a makeshift laboratory in a corridor of Grant Medical College. In three months of persist... moreIn October 1896, an epidemic of bubonic plague struck Bombay (now Mumbai) and the government asked Haffkine to help. He embarked upon the development of a vaccine in a makeshift laboratory in a corridor of Grant Medical College. In three months of persistent work (one of his assistants experienced a nervous breakdown, two others quit), a form for human trials was ready and on January 10, 1897 Haffkine tested it on himself. After these results were announced to the authorities, volunteers at the Byculla jail were inoculated and survived the epidemics, while seven inmates of the control group died.
Haffkine's successes in fighting the ongoing epidemics were undisputable, but some officials still insisted on old methods based on sanitarianism: washing homes by firehose with lime, herding affected and suspected persons into camps and hospitals, and restricting travel. This is the Framji Dinshaw Petit research laboratory, b. 1891 in Grant Medical college where Dr. Haffkine did his research on Buboinc p... less