# Pasteur’s laboratory begins post-exposure rabies inoculations of Joseph Meister Date: 1885 ## The fact On the morning of 6 July 1885 Joseph Meister, a nine-year-old from Alsace bitten multiple times by a dog judged rabid, received the first of a series of inoculations of dried rabid spinal cord in [Pasteur](/people/louis-pasteur)’s laboratory at the École normale. Jacques-Joseph Grancher gave the injections. Pasteur was not a licensed physician. Meister did not develop rabies. ## Context Pasteur’s group had been drying rabbit cords to attenuate rabies in dogs. Human use was experimental. Physicians Vulpian and Grancher stood between the chemist and the child’s body. Sharing that medical cover does not erase Pasteur’s protocol. Jean-Baptiste Jupille in October is another patient, not this Fact. Failed or delayed cases such as Pelletier are another Fact. Alsace’s 1871 annexation made the boy’s origin politically loud. That publicity is partly another row. ## Evidence and sources Institut Pasteur’s origin page at https://www.pasteur.fr/en/about-us/our-dna/history dates Meister’s first inoculation to 6 July 1885 and the later Institute to the influx of bite victims. Britannica at https://www.britannica.com/biography/Louis-Pasteur independently narrates the Meister treatment as the first human rabies vaccination in this tradition. The two URLs differ. Official or archival record: Institut Pasteur — origins of the rabies vaccine and the Institute (https://www.pasteur.fr/en/about-us/our-dna/history; Institut Pasteur). ## Significance Health-capacity path of unusual fame and only medium confidence: survival is documented; the counterfactual that the dog was not rabid cannot be closed from the two locators. Do not convert this child into a uniquely proven randomised trial. If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here. ## What is established and what is not Established: Meister received the cord series from 6 July 1885 and did not develop rabies. Not established: that every later human rabies protocol is this attic, or that consent met a later code. Contribution is recorded as He directed the dried-cord protocol. Grancher performed injections; Vulpian and others advised; the child and his mother arrived from Alsace. Complex. The impact note is A post-bite inoculation series that the child survived is a health-capacity path, with medium confidence because rabies incubation is uncertain and ethics sit on a split row. The dated heading stays Pasteur’s laboratory begins post-exposure rabies inoculations of Joseph Meister on 1885-07-06, not a later statue, UNESCO listing, or school film. Printers, unnamed clerks, and later editors may appear in the same file without becoming this instrument. Confidence is stated on the impact path, not hidden in adjectives. Ethical risk of the same morning is a split path, not a duplicate survival story. Mixed effects of Pasteur’s laboratory begins post-exposure rabies inoculations of Joseph Meister are separate paths. Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, museums, and adaptations are not converted into extra lifetime acts. The attached driver is health-system-capacity. The welfare reading used in this dossier is improving. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself. Shared responsibility is part of Pasteur’s laboratory begins post-exposure rabies inoculations of Joseph Meister. Naming Louis Pasteur does not delete co-authors, institutions, or later transmitters. The lag from 1885-07-06 to any measured indicator is not treated as zero. Alternative explanations — weather, other armies, later statutes, or independent cultural change — remain live where the sources do not close them. ## People - Louis Pasteur: https://factrail.ai/people/louis-pasteur ## Drivers - Health-System Capacity: https://factrail.ai/drivers/health-system-capacity ## Sources - https://www.pasteur.fr/en/about-us/our-dna/history - https://www.britannica.com/biography/Louis-Pasteur ## Methodology https://factrail.ai/methodology Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/pasteur-meister-rabies-1885