| Date | 1881 |
| Author | Pasteur |
| Contribution | b. Carried out his famous public demonstration of anthrax vaccination. |
| Reference | Foster |
| Notes | At Pouilly-le-Fort, Melun, France, in June 1881. This work, with the fowl cholera vaccination success, was reported at a Congress in London in August 1881. Foster regarded this work on attenuated vaccines as "the greatest single discovery in the history of medicine, comparable with, if not more important than, Lister's discovery of the principle of antisepsis in surgery." Geison analyses the event in detail, and discusses the disingenous nature of some of Pasteur's behavior concerning the events at Melun. He concludes that the vaccine was composed of bacteria attenuated by potassium-bichromate, not atmospheric oxygen. See entry for February (same year). |
| Category | Immunology |
| Pathogen Class | Bacteria |
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