>Artem.G at 11:16, 3 July 2021

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{{Short description|Russian-French microbiologist (1860–1930)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=December 2018}}
{{Infobox scientist
| honorific_prefix =
| name = Waldemar Mordechai Haffkine
| image = Waldemar Haffkine 2.jpg
| image_size =
| caption = Waldemar Haffkine
| birth_date = {{birth-date|15 March 1860}}
| birth_place = [[Odessa]], [[Russian Empire]]
| death_date = {{death-date and age|26 October 1930|15 March 1860}}
| death_place = [[Lausanne]], [[Switzerland]]
| residence =
| citizenship = French
| nationality = Russian, French
| field = [[bacteriology]], [[protozoology]]
| work_institutions = [[Odessa University]], [[University of Geneva]], [[Pasteur Institute]]
| alma_mater = [[Odessa University]]
| doctoral_advisor =
| doctoral_students =
| known_for = vaccines against [[cholera]] and [[bubonic plague]]
| author_abbrev_bot = Khawkine
| prizes = [[Cameron Prize of the University of Edinburgh|Cameron Prize for Therapeutics of the University of Edinburgh]] {{small|(1900)}}
}}

'''Waldemar Mordechai Wolff Haffkine''' {{postnominals|country=GBR|size=100%|CIE}} ({{lang-ru|Мордехай-Вольф Хавкин}}; 15 March 1860 – 26 October 1930) was a [[bacteriologist]] from the [[Russian Empire]] who later became a French citizen. He emigrated to France and worked at the [[Pasteur Institute]] in [[Paris]], where he developed a [[cholera vaccine]] that he tried out successfully in India. He is recognized as the first [[microbiologist]] who developed and used vaccines against [[cholera]] and [[bubonic plague]]. He tested the vaccines on himself. Lord [[Joseph Lister, 1st Baron Lister|Joseph Lister]] named him "a saviour of humanity".<ref name="Gunter Pandey 2020" /><ref>{{Cite journal|last=JHALA|first=H. I.|date=|title=W. M. W. Haffkine, Bacteriologist—A Great Savior of Mankind|url=https://hpspreview.wiscweb.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/366/2018/05/haffkine_jhala-1.pdf|journal=Indian Journal of History of Science|volume=|pages=|via=}}</ref>

He was appointed [[Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire]] (CIE) in Queen Victoria's [[1897 Diamond Jubilee Honours]]. The ''[[Jewish Chronicle]]'' of that time noted "a Ukraine Jew, trained in the schools of European science, saves the lives of [[Hindu]]s and [[Muslim|Mohammedans]] and is decorated by the descendant of [[William the Conqueror]] and [[Alfred the Great]]."<ref>''London Jewish Chronicle''. 1 June 2012. p. 8</ref>

==Early years==
Born '''Vladimir Aaronovich Mordecai Wolf Chavkin''' ({{lang-ru|Владимир (Маркус-Вольф) Аaронович Хавкин}}), the fourth of five children of Aaron and Rosalie (daughter of David-Aïsic Landsberg) in a family of a Jewish schoolmaster in [[Berdyansk]], [[Russian Empire]] (now [[Ukraine]]), he received his education in [[Odessa]], [[Berdyansk]]<ref>Igor Lyman, Victoria Konstantinova. [http://ri-urbanhistory.org.ua/library/British%20Consuls%20in%20Berdyansk.pdf The Ukrainian South as Viewed by Consuls of the British Empire (Nineteenth – Early Twentieth Centuries)] Volume 1: British Consuls in the Port City of Berdyansk (Kyiv, 2018), pp. 117–18, 316–17</ref> and [[Saint Petersburg|St. Petersburg]].<ref name=":0">{{cite journal|last=Hawgood|first=Barbara J|year=2007|title=Waldemar Mordecai Haffkine, CIE (1860–1930): prophylactic vaccination against cholera and bubonic plague in British India|url=http://www.jameslindlibrary.org/system/attachments/107/original/HaffkinePublished.pdf?1329306127|journal=Journal of Medical Biography|volume=15|issue=1|pages=9–19|doi=10.1258/j.jmb.2007.05-59|pmid=17356724|s2cid=42075270}}</ref><ref name=bulloch>{{cite journal|doi= 10.1002/path.1700340202|title= Waldemar Mordecai Wolff Haffkine|journal= The Journal of Pathology and Bacteriology|volume= 34|issue= 2|pages= 125–29|year= 1931|last1= Bulloch|first1= W.}}</ref>

Young Haffkine was also a member of the Jewish League for Self-Defense in Odessa. Haffkine was injured while defending a Jewish home during a [[pogrom]]. As a result of this action he was arrested but later released due to the intervention of biologist [[Ilya Mechnikov]].<ref>{{cite journal|author=Hawgood, Barbara J.|year=2007|title=Waldemar Mordecai Haffkine, CIE (1860–1930): prophylactic vaccination against cholera and bubonic plague in British India|url=https://www.jameslindlibrary.org/wp-data/uploads/2011/08/HaffkinePublished.pdf|journal=Journal of Medical Biography|volume=15|issue=1|pages=9–19|doi=10.1258/j.jmb.2007.05-59|pmid=17356724|s2cid=42075270}}</ref>

Haffkine continued his studies from 1879 to 1883 with Mechnikov, but after the assassination of [[Tsar]] [[Alexander II of Russia|Alexander II]], the government increasingly cracked down on people it considered suspicious, including [[intelligentsia]]. Haffkine was also employed by the zoological museum at Odessa from 1882 to 1888. Debarred from professorship, as a Jew,<ref name=":0" /> in 1888, Haffkine was allowed to emigrate to [[Switzerland]] and began his work at the [[University of Geneva]]. In 1889 he joined Mechnikov and [[Louis Pasteur]] in Paris at the newly established [[Pasteur Institute]] where he took up the only available post of librarian.<ref name=bulloch /><ref name="Daniels"/>

==Protozoological studies==
Haffkine began his scientific career as a [[protozoologist]] and [[protistologist]], under the tutelage of Ilya Mechnikov at [[Imperial Novorossiya University]] in Odessa and later at the Pasteur Institute in Paris.<ref name="fokin">{{cite book|title=Endosymbionts in ''Paramecium''|last2=Görtz|first2=Hans-Dieter|date=2009|publisher=Springer|isbn=9783540926771|editor-last=Fujishima|editor-first=Masahiro|series=Microbiology Monographs|volume=Volume 12|pages=161–99|chapter=Diversity of ''Holospora'' bacteria in ''Paramecium'' and their characterization|last1=Fokin|first1=Sergei I.|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3S_qAC29ziYC&q=khawkine&pg=PA164|name-list-style=amp}} pp. 164–65</ref> His early research was on [[protists]] such as ''[[Euglena|Astasia]]'', ''[[Euglena]]'', and ''[[Paramecium]]'', as well as the earliest studies on ''[[Holospora]]'', a [[bacterial]] [[parasite]] of ''Paramecium''.<ref name=fokin/> In the early 1890s, Haffkine shifted his attention to studies in practical [[bacteriology]].<ref name=fokin/>

The [[euglenid]] [[genus]] ''[[Khawkinea]]'' is named in honor of Haffkine's early studies of euglenids, first published in French journals with the author name translated from [[cyrillic]] as "Mardochée-Woldemar Khawkine".

==Anti-cholera vaccine==
At the time, one of the five great cholera [[pandemic]]s of the 19th century ravaged Asia and Europe. Even though [[Robert Koch]] discovered ''[[Vibrio cholerae]]'' in 1883, the medical science at that time did not consider it a sole cause of the disease. This view was supported by experiments by several biologists, notably [[Jaume Ferran i Clua]] in Spain.{{citation needed|date=March 2016}}

Haffkine focused his research on developing a cholera vaccine, and produced an attenuated form of the [[bacterium]]. Risking his own life, on 18 July 1892, Haffkine performed the first human test on himself and reported his findings on 30 July to the [[Linnean Society of London|Biological Society]]. Even though his discovery caused an enthusiastic stir in the press, it was not widely accepted by his senior colleagues, including both Mechnikov and Pasteur, nor by European official medical establishment in France, Germany and Russia.{{Citation needed|date=October 2018}}

Haffkine considered India, where hundreds of thousands died from ongoing epidemics, as the best place to test his vaccine.<ref name="Daniels"/> Through the influence of the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava, who was in Paris as the British Ambassador, he was allowed to demonstrate his ideas in England. He proceeded to India in 1893 and established a laboratory at Byculla in 1896, which moved to Parel and was later called the [[Haffkine Institute]]. Haffkine worked on the plague and by 1902–03 half a million were inoculated but on 30 October 1902, 19 people died from tetanus out of 107 inoculated at Mulkowal. This "Mulkowal disaster" led to an enquiry.<ref>{{cite journal|doi=10.1038/075486c0|title=The Inoculation Accident at Mulkowal|journal=Nature|volume=75|issue=1951|pages=486–87|year=1907|last1=Ross|first1=Ronald|bibcode=1907Natur..75..486R|s2cid=4032542|url=https://zenodo.org/record/1429481}}</ref> He was briefly suspended but reappointed director of the Biological Laboratory in Calcutta.{{Citation needed|date=October 2018}} He retired in 1915 and suffering from [[malaria]], had to return to France.

==Anti-plague vaccine==
"Unlike tetanus or diphtheria, which were quickly neutralized by effective vaccines by the 1920s, the immunological aspects of bubonic plague proved to be much more daunting."<ref name="Echenberg"/> In October 1896, an epidemic of bubonic plague struck [[Bombay]] 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 10 January 1897<ref>[http://haffkineinstitute.org/institute.htm Haffkine Institute- For Training, Research and Testing] ''haffkineinstitute.org'', accessed 11 December 2020</ref> Haffkine tested it on himself. "Haffkine's vaccine used a small amount of the bacteria to produce an immune reaction."<ref name="Roberts1">''Facts and ideas from anywhere; The amish, body weight, and exercise; obesity related costs; neurologist, author, master of Pembroke college of Oxford University, and breaker of the 4-minute mile record, Bannister, Roger, Sir; Editorial.'' Roberts, William Clifford. [http://www.baylorhealth.edu/Documents/BUMC%20Proceedings/2004%20Vol%2017/No.%203/17_3_roberts.pdf Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings]. 377(9) Vol. 17 No. 3 {{ISSN|0899-8280}}. 1 July 2004.</ref> 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. "Like others of these early vaccines, the Haffkine formulation had nasty side effects, and did not provide complete protection, though it was said to have reduced risk by up to 50 percent."<ref name="Echenberg">''Pestis redux: the initial years of the third bubonic plague pandemic, 1894–1901.'' Echenberg, Myron. Journal of World History. 429(21) Vol. 13 No. 2 {{ISSN|1045-6007}}. 22 September 2002.</ref><ref name="Roberts1"/>

Despite Haffkine's successes, some officials still primarily insisted on methods based on [[sanitation|sanitarianism]]: washing homes by [[fire hose]] with [[Calcium oxide|lime]], herding affected and suspected persons into camps and hospitals, and restricting travel.{{Citation needed|date=October 2018}}

Even though official Russia was still unsympathetic to his research, {{Citation needed|date=October 2018}} Haffkine's Russian colleagues, doctors [[Vladimir Vysokovich|V. K. Vysokovich]] and [[Danylo Zabolotny|D. K. Zabolotny]], visited him in Bombay. During the 1898 cholera outbreak in the Russian Empire, the vaccine called "лимфа Хавкина" ("limfa Havkina", ''Havkin's [[lymph]]'') saved thousands of lives across the empire.

By the turn of the 20th century, the number of inoculees in India alone reached four million and Haffkine was appointed the Director of the Plague Laboratory in Bombay (now called [[Haffkine Institute]]).<ref name="Daniels">''Rats, fleas and men; Anthony Daniels on how the secret of bubonic plague was found.'' by Anthony Daniels. Sunday Telegraph (London). p. 14. 25 August 2002.</ref> In 1900, he was awarded the [[Cameron Prize for Therapeutics of the University of Edinburgh]].<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Lutzker|first=Edythe|date=1978-01-01|title=Cameron Prizewinner: Waldemar M. Haffkine, C. I. E.|url=https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9789004418257/B9789004418257_s030.xml|journal=Clio Medica : Acta Academiae Internationalis Historiae Medicinae |volume=13|issue=3–4|language=en|pages=269–76|doi=10.1163/9789004418257_030|pmid=89932|isbn=9789004418257}}</ref>

Haffkine was the first to prepare a vaccine for human prophylaxis by killing virulent culture by heat at 60 °C.<ref>{{OL book|id=OL7197872M|cname=Practical bacteriology, microbiology and serum therapy (medical and veterinary) }}, p. 468</ref> The major limit of his vaccine was the lack of activity against pulmonary forms of plague.<ref>{{OL book|id=OL180208M|cname=Haffkine's plague vaccine}}</ref>

==Connection with Zionism==
In 1898, Haffkine approached [[Aga Khan III]] with an offer for [[Sultan]] [[Abdul Hamid II]] to resettle Jews in [[Palestine (region)|Palestine]], then a province of the [[Ottoman Empire]]: the effort "could be progressively undertaken in the [[Holy Land]]", "the land would be obtained by purchase from the Sultan's subjects", "the capital was to be provided by wealthier members of the Jewish community", but the plan was rejected.{{citation needed|date=January 2017}}

==Little Dreyfus affair==
In March 1902, nineteen [[Indian people|Indian]] villagers from Mulkowal in [[Punjab]] (inoculated from a single bottle of vaccine) died of [[tetanus]], whilst the other 88 villagers were well. Evidence pointed to the contamination of one bottle - 53N. The procedure for sterilisation at the Parel lab had been changed from carbolic acid to sterilisation using heating, a process that had been used at the [[Pasteur Institute]] safely for two years but was new in the British Empire. The 1903 commission from the Indian government concluded this was the source of the contamination.<ref name="Gunter Pandey 2020">{{cite web |last1=Gunter |first1=Joel |last2=Pandey |first2=Vikas |title=Waldemar Haffkine: The vaccine pioneer the world forgot |website=BBC News |date=2020-12-11 |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-55050012 |access-date=2020-12-14}}</ref>

An inquiry commission indicted Haffkine, and he was relieved of his position and returned to England. The report was unofficially known as the "Little [[Dreyfus affair]]", as a reminder of Haffkine's Jewish background and religion. {{Citation needed|date=October 2018}}

The [[Lister Institute]] reinvestigated [[Claim (legal)|the claim]] and overruled the verdict: it was discovered that an assistant used a dirty bottle cap without [[sterilization (microbiology)|sterilizing]] it.

In July 1907, a letter published in ''[[The Times]]'' called the case against Haffkine "distinctly disproven". It was signed by [[Ronald Ross]] ([[Nobel Prize|Nobel]] laureate, malaria researcher),
R.F.C. Leith (the founder of [[Birmingham University]] Institute of Pathology),<ref>[http://www.pathology.bham.ac.uk/history.shtml History. Birmingham University School of Cancer Sciences] ''www.pathology.bham.ac.uk'', accessed 11 December 2020</ref>
William R. Smith (President of the Council of the [[Royal Institute of Public Health]]), and [[Simon Flexner]] (Director of Laboratories at [[New York City]] [[Rockefeller University|Rockefeller Institute]]), among other medical dignitaries. This led to Haffkine's acquittal.

Published materials from the India Home Department related to the vaccination incident (along with Haffkine's personal diaries on [[microfilm]]) are held at the [[United States National Library of Medicine]] in [[Bethesda, Maryland]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://oculus.nlm.nih.gov/haffkine36|title= W.M. Haffkine collection [microfilm] 1892–1930|publisher=National Library of Medicine}}</ref>

==Late years==
[[File:Waldemar Haffkine 1964 stamp of India.jpg|thumb|Haffkine on a 1964 stamp of India]]
Since Haffkine's post in [[Bombay]] was already occupied, he moved to [[Calcutta]] and worked there until his retirement in 1914.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://lemonde.co.il/2016/12/11/livre-juif-waldemar-mordekhai-haffkine-biographie-intellectuelle/|title=Livre juif : Waldemar Mordekhai Haffkine Biographie intellectuelle {{!}} LeMonde.co.il|last=Douillet|first=Claudine|access-date=13 December 2016}}</ref> Professor Haffkine returned to France and later moved to [[Lausanne, Switzerland]], where he spent the last years of his life. During his brief visit to the Soviet Union in 1927, he found drastic changes in the country of his birth.

Haffkine received numerous honors and awards. In 1925, the Plague Laboratory in Bombay was renamed the [[Haffkine Institute]]. In commemoration of the centennial of his birth, Haffkine Park was planted in Israel in the 1960s.

===Orthodox Judaism===
In a biography of him, Nobelist [[Selman Abraham Waksman]] explains that, in this last phase of his life, Haffkine had become a deeply religious man. Haffkine returned to [[Orthodox Judaism|Orthodox]] Jewish practice and wrote [http://www.hafftka.com/haffkine/A_Plea_for_Orthodoxy.pdf ''A Plea for Orthodoxy''] (1916). In this article, he advocated traditional religious observance and decried the lack of such observance among "enlightened" Jews, and stressed the importance of community life, stating:
{{Quote|A brotherhood built up of racial ties, long tradition, common suffering, faith and hope, is a union ready-made, differing from artificial unions in that the bonds existing between the members contain an added promise of duration and utility. Such a union takes many centuries to form and is a power for good, the neglect or disuse of which is as much an injury to humanity as the removal of an important limb is to the individual... no law of nature operates with more fatality and precision than the law according to which those communities survive in the strife for existence that conform the nearest to the Jewish teachings on the relation of man to his Creator; on the ordering of time for work and rest; on the formation of families and the duties of husband and wife, parents and children ; on the paramount obligations of truthfulness and justice between neighbor and neighbor and to the stranger within the gates.|Haffkine (1916)<ref>''[https://archive.org/stream/josephhisbrethre00mhuliala/josephhisbrethre00mhuliala_djvu.txt A Plea for Orthodoxy]''; reprinted from The Menorah Journal Méhul, Etienne Nicolas. ''Joseph and his brethren : opera in three acts ([19?])''. London : Breitkopf & Härtel, p. 13</ref>}}

In 1929, he established the ''Haffkine Foundation'' to foster Jewish education in [[Eastern Europe]]. Haffkine was also respectful of other religions, and "he considered it of the utmost importance to promote the study of the [[Bible]]."<ref>[[Selman Abraham Waksman|Waksman, Selman Abraham]]. 1964. ''The brilliant and tragic life of W.M.W. Haffkine, bacteriologist''. Rutgers University Press. pp. 75, 77</ref>

==References==
{{reflist|30em}}

==Sources==
*Edinger, Henry. "The Lonely Odyssey of W.M.W. Haffkine", In ''Jewish Life'' Volume 41, No. 2 (Spring 1974).
*[[Selman Waksman|Waksman, Selman A.]]. ''The Brilliant and Tragic Life of W.M.W. Haffkine: Bacteriologist'', Rutgers University Press (1964).
* Hanhart, Joel. Lausanne University, Faculté de biologie et médecine. ''Haffkine, une esquisse : biographie intellectuelle et analytique de Waldemar Mordekhaï Haffkine'' 2013
* [https://societedesetudesjuives.org/offres/prix-de-these-2014-societe-des-etudes-juives/ Prix de thèse 2014 – Société des Etudes Juives] ''Societe des Etudes Juives societedesetudesjuives.org'', accessed 11 December 2020
* {{DSB |first=Edythe |last=Lutzker |title=Haffkine, Waldemar Mordecai Wolfe |volume=6 |pages=11–13 }}
* Hanhart, Joel. "Waldemar Mordekhaï Haffkine (1860–1930)". ''Biographie intellectuelle'', Éditions Honoré Champion (2016), {{ISBN|978-2-7453-3074-1}}.
* Hanhart, Joel. "Un illustre inconnu. Une biographie du docteur" ''Waldemar Mordekhaï Haffkine'', Éditions Lichma (2017), {{ISBN|978-2-912553-84-3}}.
* Markish, David. ''Mahatma. The Savior Mankind Never Knew'' (Translated by Marian Schwartz<ref>[https://www.marianschwartz.com/ Marian Schwartz]</ref>). Mahatma Haffkine Foundation,<ref>[https://mahatmahaffkine.com/ Mahatma Haffkine]</ref> Aleksandr Duel, New-York, 2019.
===Notes===
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
{{Commons category|Waldemar Haffkine}}
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Waldemar Haffkine}}
* [http://haffkineinstitute.org/ Haffkine Research Institute]
* [http://www.asm.org/ccLibraryFiles/FILENAME/0000000248/530787p366.pdf Waldemar Haffkine: Pioneer of Cholera vaccine] at [[American Society for Microbiology]]
* [https://www.fda.gov/cber/minutes/plague101304t.pdf Plague Vaccine Design] at [[Food and Drug Administration]] (FDA)
* [http://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/odessa/LIF_SCI_Haffkine.asp Biography] at Jewishgen
* [http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/007300.html The Holy Scientist] at windsofchange.net
* [http://www.cjnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9711&Itemid=86 Great scientist, great Jew], Rabbi M. Friedman at cjnews.com
*[https://blog.nli.org.il/en/ The Last Resort: The Man Who Saved the World from Two Pandemics], Udi Edery at [https://blog.nli.org.il/en/haffkine/ the National library of Israel]
*[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-55050012 Waldemar Haffkine: The vaccine pioneer the world forgot], Joel Gunter and Vikas Pandey at the BBC.Com

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Haffkine, Waldemar}}
[[Category:Jewish bacteriologists]]
[[Category:Microbiologists of the Russian Empire]]
[[Category:Jews of the Russian Empire]]
[[Category:Emigrants from the Russian Empire to Switzerland]]
[[Category:Odessa Jews]]
[[Category:Companions of the Order of the Indian Empire]]
[[Category:1860 births]]
[[Category:1930 deaths]]
[[Category:Inventors of the Russian Empire]]
[[Category:Baalei teshuva]]
[[Category:Physicians of the Russian Empire]]
[[Category:Jewish inventors]]
[[Category:Jewish British scientists]]
[[Category:Odessa University alumni]]
[[Category:Physicians from Odessa]]
[[Category:Jewish physicians]]
[[Category:Emigrants from the Russian Empire to France]]
[[Category:Emigrants from the Russian Empire to India]]
[[Category:British people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent]]
[[Category:Naturalised citizens of the United Kingdom]]
[[Category:Orthodox Jews]]

Waldemar Haffkine - Revision history

>Artem.G at 11:16, 3 July 2021