Medical scientists on Israeli stamps, and their Indian connection

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Israel honoured two medical scientists, with a postage stamp-set in 1994. Both, worked on vaccines to prevent infections that are common in the tropics. Both were born, and received their early schooling in regions that were once part of Russian Empire. Being Jew, and faced with persecution, their families migrated westwards. India benefited from their work. Their similarities end here. While one of them worked in India for about 10 years, and spent his last years in Switzerland, another worked and lived in Jerusalem. While they were contemporaries, yet they probably did not meet each other. However, as the fate had it, both Saul Adler and Waldemar Haffkine were together on a postage stamp-set.

Cholera vaccine brought Haffkine to India

Waldemar Haffkine was born in 1860 in Odessa, a region, currently in Ukraine. His father was a schoolteacher, and education was Waldemar’s strength. By 1888, he had completed is doctoral in biological sciences, but being a Jew he was not eligible to become a professor in the local university. He moved to Geneva, and later to Pasteur Institute in Paris. While, his early work was on protozoa, he shifted his domain to bacteriology, and started working on Cholera vaccines. In 1892, he had developed a Cholera vaccine, that had fewer takers in Paris.

Next year, in 1893 he travelled to India, a country where he would stay on for next nine years. He successfully tested and established a place for Cholera vaccine by 1896. By this time, he had also set up a laboratory in Parel, Bombay – which later was named as Haffkine institute.

Plague vaccine setback, and Haffkine’s exit

In 1902, he developed a vaccine for Plague. This deadly disease, believed to be responsible for decline of Roman Empire, had struck India repeated epidemics. The same year, about 20 individuals who were being tested with the vaccine, died. Haffkine was removed from the Parel laboratory, he had established, and was sent back to England. This event is better known as Mulkowal incident, named after the place in Punjab where deaths had occurred.

It took efforts of many scientists to finally establish that Mulkowal incident was due to a contaminated vaccine vial. The final report which was published in 1914, exonerated him. He returned to India, and was given a position in Calcutta. However, his work was curtailed, he was not permitted to try newer plague vaccines. In 1915, he had malaria, and left India, never to return again. His plague vaccine was however successful and adopted for use across India. In 1925, British government renamed lab in Parel, Bombay after him. Haffkine died in Switzerland in 1930, alone and aloof. The lab that carries his name, however lives on.

Saul Adler and Leishmaniasis

Saul Adler was born in a family of Jewish Priests in 1895, and his family moved to England, when he was five. He studied medicine, and in 1917, he joined British Army as a medical doctor. He was posted in middle-east, where he got interested in Tropical Medicine. Over next five years, he trained in tropical medicine, and worked on malaria research in Sierra Leone. In 1924, he took up a position in Jerusalem, to establish a new institute of microbiology. This was his workplace till his death in 1966.

He spent his research career on Leishmaniasis or Kala-Azar. This is a disease, caused by a protozoa, and spread by tiny sand-flies. Saul performed a number of studies on sand-fly, life cycle of Leishmania and sand-fly. While reducing sand-fly habitat is one of the means to prevent Leishmania, Saul went a step further. He developed a vaccine for Leishmania, that was later withdrawn in 1980s. This vaccine had led to a peculiar form Leishmania skin infection. None-the-less Saul Adler’s experiments on transmission of Kala-Azar through sand-fly had a major impact on its eradication efforts.

Epilogue

Today Cholera, plague and Kala-Azar are all on a decline. These three diseases were once a common occurrence in India. While, a number of public health measures led to their decline, both Haffkine and Saul Adler had a part to play. Science has and always had a global reach.