Sandra Moss, MD: Waldemar Haffkine: Bubonic Plague, Cholera, and the Malkowal Disaster

Abstract

​Waldemar Mordechai Wolff Haffkine (1860-1930) was born in Odessa, where, as a university student, he was arrested from time to time for revolutionary actions.  Focused on the blossoming field of microbiology, he trained in Paris with the pioneering scientists of his day.  While British Raj officials in India focused unsuccessfully on municipal sanitation to control epidemics, Haffkine, from his laboratory base in India, developed cholera and bubonic plague vaccines that would save countless lives.

​In 1902, Haffkine was wrongly blamed for brutal deaths from tetanus at a field plague vaccine station in the Punjab village of Malkowal.  (A member of the vaccinating team failed to follow safety protocols developed by Haffkine.)  Despite support from colleagues, his reputation was unjustly and irreparably damaged.  Haffkine spent his final years supporting Jewish causes abroad.  (While in America, he visited a Jewish farming cooperative in New Jersey.)   

​Haffkine lived his final years in Lausanne, Switzerland.  Among his early biographers was Rutgers’ microbiologist Selman Waksman, whose work with streptomycin led to the first effective drug for tuberculosis.

About the speaker 

​Dr. Moss is a graduate of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.  She practiced primary care internal medicine at Rutgers Community Health Plan, an early staff model HMO, in New Brunswick.  She is past president of the Medical History Society of New Jersey and the American Osler Society.  Several of her books and numerous articles focus on the history of medicine, with an emphasis on New Jersey topics. 

​Following a recent move to join family in Chicago, she (like many others) has relied on the miracle of Zoom (and the expertise of archivist Bob Vietrogoski) to remain active in the Medical History Society of New Jersey.