Health & biology · 1885

Rabies vaccine

Pasteur saved nine-year-old Joseph Meister after a rabid dog bite with an attenuated vaccine.

Pasteur and Emile Roux weakened rabies virus in dried rabbit spinal cord and used it in 1885. It showed vaccines could be made deliberately in the lab, not only found in nature.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 2

Koch's bacteriology 1876
Vaccination 1796

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Childhood vaccine coverage Latest: DTP3: 85 % of one-year-olds (2025) Source: Our World in Data

Life expectancy in the UK since 1543 Latest: 81.3 years (2023) Source: Our World in Data