# Pasteur reports the public anthrax vaccination trial at Pouilly-le-Fort

Date: 1881

## The fact

On 5 May 1881 an anthrax vaccination trial opened at Pouilly-le-Fort near Melun; on 2 June 1881 the public comparison showed vaccinated sheep alive and unvaccinated controls dead after challenge. [Pasteur](/people/louis-pasteur) then reported the trial to the learned public. Hippolyte Rossignol’s farm, the veterinary society’s dare, and a press gallery made it a spectacle. It is veterinary anthrax, not rabies, and not a later national immunisation statute.

## Context

Toussaint and others were already publishing anthrax-vaccination claims. Koch had identified the bacillus. Pasteur’s group offered attenuation as a method. Chamberland and Roux did much of the tube work. Sharing that labour does not erase Pasteur’s public direction of the trial. What was injected, oxygen attenuation versus potassium bichromate, is the subject of a later methodological controversy row. Do not copy this trial as a second Fact under a new heading.

If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here.

## Evidence and sources

Institut Pasteur history at https://www.pasteur.fr/en/institut-pasteur/history places Pouilly-le-Fort in the vaccine sequence before rabies. FEMS at https://academic.oup.com/femsre/article/48/3/fuae010/7659358 independently dates 3 May / June 1881 as a public anthrax demonstration. The two URLs differ.

Official or archival record: Institut Pasteur — History (https://www.pasteur.fr/en/institut-pasteur/history; Institut Pasteur).

## Significance

Infectious-disease path: weakening transmission in a veterinary demonstration that later licensed human hopes. Mid weight, not a ministry. High confidence on the public outcome; method details sit on the contested row.

Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, museums, and adaptations are not converted into extra lifetime acts.

## What is established and what is not

Established: a public Pouilly-le-Fort trial in May–June 1881 showed a survival contrast Pasteur reported. Not established: that the injected preparation was exactly the oxygen-attenuated vaccine of the public story in every tube. Contribution is recorded as He directed the protocol and the public claim. Roux, Chamberland, veterinarians, and the farmer Rossignol ran animals. Complex. The impact note is A public controlled demonstration that vaccinated sheep survived anthrax challenge is a transmission-reduction path, not a human mass campaign. The dated heading stays Pasteur reports the public anthrax vaccination trial at Pouilly-le-Fort on 1881-06-02, 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.

The attached driver is infectious-disease-transmission. The welfare reading used in this dossier is improving. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself.

Confidence is stated on the impact path, not hidden in adjectives. Do not duplicate this trial as the Geison controversy; that is another row. Mixed effects of Pasteur reports the public anthrax vaccination trial at Pouilly-le-Fort are separate paths.

Shared responsibility is part of Pasteur reports the public anthrax vaccination trial at Pouilly-le-Fort. Naming Louis Pasteur does not delete co-authors, institutions, or later transmitters. The lag from 1881-06-02 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

- Infectious-Disease Transmission: https://factrail.ai/drivers/infectious-disease-transmission

## Sources

- https://academic.oup.com/femsre/article/48/3/fuae010/7659358
- https://www.pasteur.fr/en/institut-pasteur/history

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/pasteur-pouilly-le-fort-1881