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Between Faith and Reason
Waldemar Haffkine (1860–1930) in India1
Marina Sorokina
1 is article is based on the Haffkine Collection in the Manuscript Division of the Jewish National and University
Library, Hebrew University, Jerusalem. All quotes by Haffkine are from the collection, unless otherwise specified. I am
grateful to Mitya Perchenok in Jerusalem for his great assistance in collecting documents.
FIGURE 1: Indian Medical Service
Congress, Calcutta 1894. Haffkine is
number 63. Collection of Kenneth and
Joyce Robbins.
164 MARINA SOROKINA
In his notebook, the eminent bacteriologist
Waldemar Haffkine, who vaccinated hundreds of
thousands of Indians against cholera and plague,
wrote down these words of eodor Herzl, the founder
of modern political Zionism: “Religion keeps us
together, science makes us free”.2 ey reflected two
facets of him, his inner world and practical activities.
His scientific work was open to the world and is well
known; but his religious life was more hidden from
both the general public and historians.
Haffkine was Jewish by ethnicity and religion,
Russian by birth, and a European scientist by education
and views. He was a zoologist turned bacteriologist.
Haffkine came to India in 1893, with the support of
the British colonial administration, to test the efficacy
of a cholera vaccine he had produced while working at
Louis Pasteur’s laboratory. He ended up spending
more than twenty years in India, treating patients,
advising officials, and reflecting on urgent social and
religious problems.
2 Herzl 1920, S. 80.
FIGURE 2: Waldemar Haffkine.
FIGURE 3: First day cover for Israeli stamp in honor of Haffkine’s work against the plague in India.
Collection of Kenneth and Joyce Robbins.
BETWEEN FAITH & REASON WALDEMAR HAFFKINE 18601930 IN INDIA 165
Early Years
Haffkine was born to a merchant Aron Haffkine and his wife Rosalia in 1860, in the prosperous Black
Sea port of Odessa, then in Russia. e synagogue registered his name as Mordko-Wolf though he was
later called Marcus-Wulf, Waldemar, and Vladimir. e roots of the contradictions between Haffkine’s
outward persona and his personal beliefs possibly lay in the views of his parents. Dr Hillel Joffe, his
childhood friend, recalled that Haffkine’s father was never a religious person. He identified himself with
his Russian countrymen and refused to give a religious education to his son. Haffkine’s mother, on the
other hand, was a devout Jew, but she died when Waldemar was only eight years old.
Waldemar received most of his early education in Berdyansk, a port in what is now the southeast part
of Ukraine. He enrolled in the Department of Natural Sciences in the Malorossiisky University in
Odessa. ere he came under the influence of microbiologist Elie Metchnikoff (1845–1916), a future
Nobel Prize winner. After earning a doctorate, he joined the staff of the Odessa Natural History
Museum where he worked until 1888, publishing five papers on the hereditary characteristics of
unicellular organisms.
e diaries and notebooks of the young Haffkine show him to have been a romantic and revolutionary.
Replying to a questionnaire on his priorities in life, he stressed that his first was the readiness to defend
somebody. Young Haffkine dreamed about social revolution in Russia; he wanted to be a revolutionary
leader and Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–82) was his hero. During his student years, Haffkine became a
member of the Jewish League for Self-Defense and a member of Narodnaya Volya (Will of the People),
the terrorist revolutionary group responsible for the assassination of Emperor Alexander II in 1881.
Haffkine was not directly involved in this act, but during his stay in Odessa he was arrested three times
by the Russian authorities, twice expelled from the university, and lived under police control.
Budding Bacteriologist
In 1888, Haffkine was allowed to leave Russia for Switzerland where he joined the University of Geneva
and taught physiology. In 1890, he followed Metchnikoff who had been invited by Louis Pasteur to head
a laboratory at the newly-opened Pasteur Institute. Haffkine held a lowly position of assistant librarian,
but also worked in Metchnikoff ’s laboratory on bacteria that attack paramecium and the adaptation of
microrganisms to adverse conditions of growth. Later, Haffkine began to study Vibrio cholerae, the
microorganism that, in 1883, Robert Koch had isolated and shown to be the causative agent of Asiatic
cholera.
At that time, one of the five great nineteenth-century cholera pandemics was ravaging Asia and
Europe. Following Pasteur, Haffkine believed in prevention rather than cure and focused his research on
developing a cholera vaccine and producing a cholera inoculation. In November 1891, Pasteur introduced
Haffkine to the visiting prince of Siam as “the person who is now very near, nearest of all, to this [cholera
vaccine] discovery”. e prince told Haffkine that if he did find a remedy against cholera, Siam would
erect a statue for him. To this Pasteur added, “a golden statue”!3
Haffkine finally succeeded in fixing the cholera virus in a well-defined strength, and could decrease or
increase its virulence with certainty. In 1892, he reported to the weekly meeting of the Society of Biology
in Paris that an inoculation of attenuated cholera vibrios immunized guinea pigs against a lethal attack
of Asiatic cholera. e next week a second note recorded that rabbits and pigeons were also immunized
successfully. And very soon Haffkine performed the first human tests on himself and on a Russian-Jewish
3 Löwy 1992, p. 279.
166 MARINA SOROKINA
network of volunteers, his friends who were political
immigrants in Paris. Later he vaccinated other volunteers,
one of whom was Ernest Hanbury Hankin (1865–
1939), who had been appointed as chemical examiner,
analyst and bacteriologist to the Northwest Provinces of
India. Hankin, who studied malaria, cholera, and other
diseases, was a strong supporter of Haffkine, publishing
observations on Haffkine’s method in the British Medical
Journal,4 and giving a detailed account of the vaccine
preparation and of his own experience of being
inoculated.
Anxious to test the value of his anti-cholera vaccine
in the field, Haffkine applied to the Russian and other
embassies to give him an opportunity. A positive response
again came from the British. Lord Frederick Dufferin,
British Ambassador to Paris and a former Viceroy of
India (1884–8), suggested the testing of the new vaccine
in Bengal, and arranged for Haffkine to meet Lord John
4 Hankin 1892.
FIGURE 4: Visit to Daman (Portuguese India) in 1897 of Haffikine and Nobel Prize winner Robert Koch.
Collection of the Jewish National and University Library, Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
FIGURE 5: Haffkine with an Indian patient: mural
Jewish Contributions to Medicine by Terry Schoonhoven at
Cedars-Sinai Hospital, Los Angeles.
BETWEEN FAITH & REASON WALDEMAR HAFFKINE 18601930 IN INDIA 167
Kimberley, Secretary of State for India,
in London. British officials thus made
possible Haffkine’s trip to India.
Haffkine arrived in Calcutta, in March
1893, joining Presidency Hospital as a
bacteriologist. For decades after that,
he was to remain deeply connected
with India and its people.
FIGURE 6: Advertisement for a patent
medicine used to treat cholera. Postcard sent
in 1900 from Bombay to Bahawalpur.
Collection of Kenneth and Joyce Robbins.
FIGURE 7: Haffine inoculating Indians against cholera.
A.
Bengal 1896. Collection of the Jewish
National and University Library, Hebrew
University, Jerusalem.
B.
Soldiers of the ird Gurkhas.
Collection of Kenneth and
Joyce Robbins.
168 MARINA SOROKINA
Early Years in India
Haffkine hoped to start inoculations in Calcutta, but cholera was then not epidemic there and he met
local opposition to his plans. Many doctors believed it was impossible to obtain immunity by giving a
subcutaneous injection of virulent microbes. Many Indians were also deeply suspicious of his motives,
and Haffkine survived an assassination attempt by Islamic extremists. However, Hankin, now in charge
of a newly-established bacteriological laboratory, invited Haffkine to Agra to inoculate both military and
civilian volunteers. From April 1893 to the end of July 1895, with the assistance of officers of the Indian
and Army Medical Staff in India, Haffkine had inoculated over 42,000 persons, including over 37,000
Indians.5
e Government of India was impressed by the efficacy of the anti-cholera vaccine. When in late
September 1896, the bubonic plague epidemic reached Bombay, Haffkine was sent there to devise a
similar vaccine to combat that disease. In October 1896, Haffkine entered the Indian Civil Service and
focused on developing a preventive vaccine using dead bacteria (later to be called the Haffkine lymph).
A form useful enough for human trials was ready by January 1897. As always, Haffkine tested the new
vaccine on himself and after receiving positive results, suggested the inoculation of other volunteers. e
practical results were amazing: inoculated persons fell ill seven times less and died ten times less. Use of
the vaccine in the field started immediately.
Haffkine soon obtained a new and very powerful patron and good friend, Sir Sultan Mohammed
Shah (1877–1957), the third Aga Khan and the 48th Imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims. Having been
educated in Great Britain, the young Aga Khan supported scientific innovations especially in the field of
medicine. He suggested that Haffkine give prophylactic inoculations to his community in Bombay. About
half of the community (10,000–12,000 persons) received the Haffkine lymph and the results were
spectacular.6
In 1897 the Aga Khan provided a building, Kushroo Lodge, near his own residence on Malabar Hill,
to house Haffkine’s Plague Research Laboratory. Haffkine suggested that the Aga Khan establish a new
bacteriological institute in India based on the model of the Pasteur Institute. Haffkine believed that such
an institution should be independent of the Indian sanitary and medical authorities: “is freedom is
essential for any original effort, either in science or in art”.7 Such an institute was not established then.
“Jewish” Activities
In his Memoirs (1954) the Aga Khan wrote that he approached Turkish Sultan Abdul Hamid II in 1898,
urging him to settle Jews in Palestine, then an Ottoman province. According to the Aga Khan, the whole
plan of establishing such a Jewish settlement was based upon Haffkine’s proposal to have “wealthier
members of the Jewish community” purchase land. Haffkine’s plan grew from his close contacts with
Jewish national activists and Zionist leaders, such as the famous French philanthropist Baron Edmond
James de Rothschild (1845–1934). Rothschild was known for his support of scientific research
institutions and sponsoring archeological excavations in Egypt, Syria, and Palestine. He also actively
supported the Zionist movement and from 1882, began to redeem lands in Palestine with the goal of
the establishment of a Jewish homeland. e correspondence between Haffkine and Baron Rothschild
shows that they had rather close contact and discussed the problems of the Jewish communities in Asian
countries. e Aga Khan’s scheme was turned down by the Sultan Abdul Hamid II. e disappointed
5 Haffkine 1895.
6 Hagwood 2007. She refers to Haffkine 1899.
7 e correspondence between Haffkine and the Aga Khan is in the Manuscript Division of the Upsala University,
Sweden aд accessible on the internet at http://waller.ub.uu.se/.
BETWEEN FAITH & REASON WALDEMAR HAFFKINE 18601930 IN INDIA 169
170 MARINA SOROKINA
BETWEEN FAITH & REASON WALDEMAR HAFFKINE 18601930 IN INDIA 171
FIGURE 8AC: Plague and the Bene Israel of Bombay and the Konkan (1898–9) as documented in
e Bene Israelite, a publication of the Bene Israel community. Collection of Kenneth and Joyce Robbins.
172 MARINA SOROKINA
FIGURE 9: Floor plan of the Bene Israel Plague Hospital. Collection of Kenneth and Joyce Robbins.
FIGURE 10: e Aga Khan’s Diamond Jubilee poster stamp, Collection of Kenneth and Joyce Robbins.
BETWEEN FAITH & REASON WALDEMAR HAFFKINE 18601930 IN INDIA 173
Aga Khan wrote: “I must say its rejection has always seemed to me one of Abdul Hamid’s greatest
blunders”.8
is correspondence opens up a new and little known side of Haffkine’s life: his permanent devotion
to the idea of Jewish worldwide solidarity and his early involvement in the Zionist movement. In Paris
in 1891–3 he was one of the founders of the Society for the Revival of the Hebrew Language. In 1898
he supported the appeal of the Bene Israel Plague and Famine Relief Fund to open a Jewish Plague
Hospital for Jews of all denominations in Bombay,9 and similarly the Jewish Free School in Calcutta in
1908. In 1907–9 Haffkine intensively discussed the status of the Sephardi Jews in India with French
Jews. In 1907 he helped Jewish refugees migrating to the USA, and corresponded with the English Zionist
Federation in 1909 about the foundation of a microbiological institute in Palestine. In July 1910 he took
part in the general meeting to discuss the future of the Neveh Shalome Synagogue in Calcutta.10
Bouquets and Brickbats
Haffkine’s professional life, however, was focused on public health, irrespective of community, religion,
or social origin. e revolutionary ideology of this former Russian-Jewish “terrorist “ was transformed
8 Aga Khan 1954, p. 185.
9 Umerkhadi Post, Bombay, 1 June 1897.
10 Musleah 1975, p. 172.
FIGURE 11: Plague Research Laboratory, Parel, Bombay 1902–3. Photographs by Dr Gibson.
Collection of the Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem.
174 MARINA SOROKINA
into the bacteriological revolution of a reformer who sought to improve society by means of science and
education. His Indian vaccination programs were highly appreciated both in Great Britain and India.
e President of the Royal Society, Lord Joseph Lister (1827–1912), saluted him as a “savior of
Humanity”. Queen Victoria made Haffkine a Companion of the Indian Empire. In August 1899, the
Governor of Bombay, Lord William Mansfield Sandhurst (1855–1921), gave Haffkine the former
residence of the Governor, and Haffkine’s laboratory made a final move to the Old Government House
at Parel. Haffkine had been appointed a state bacteriologist of the Indian government in 1893, and
became, in 1901, the Director-in-Chief of the Plague Laboratory in Bombay with a staff of 53.
Haffkine’s successes in fighting the ongoing epidemics were undisputable, but he had many enemies
and detractors. Some British officials suspected him of being a Russian spy. Indian dissidents launched
rumors that his vaccine was a poison prepared by the government. Another report asserted that the
vaccine had been produced with the flesh of pigs and cattle,11 the same explosive rumors that had ignited
the 1857 rebellion by evoking the disgust of both Muslims and Hindus.
11 Hays 1998, p. 199.
FIGURE 11A: Staff at the Plague Research Laboratory, Bombay.
BETWEEN FAITH & REASON WALDEMAR HAFFKINE 18601930 IN INDIA 175
FIGURE 11B: Dispatching Department, A.L. Martin in charge.
e staff of Haffkine’s Plague Laboratory, which consisted mostly of British military officers, was also
not happy with a Russian Jew at the head of the enterprise. An officer-in-charge of the Laboratory, Major
William Barney Bannerman, who had spent about 20 years serving the Indian Medical Service, intrigued
against Haffkine with the support of some of the staff.12 In his diaries, Haffkine wrote bitterly of
Bannerman: “ere is nothing for him to do. . . . We do not let him do anything else.”
It is not surprising, then, that an anti-Haffkine campaign was launched, when, in the middle of the
massive inoculation of about half a million Punjabis in 1901–02, nineteen people died of tetanus. is
was dubbed the Mulkowal Case. In April 1903 an Inquiry Commission appointed by the Government
of India indicted Haffkine for changing the vaccine production procedures approved by the Plague
Commission of 1898–9.
Relieved of the position of Director of the laboratory in 1904, Haffkine returned to Europe.
Unofficially, the report of the Inquiry Commission was called the “Little Dreyfus Affair”, a pointer to
Haffkine’s Jewish background and religion. ough the research of Eli Chernin has proved there was no
evidence that Haffkine was “overtly victimized by anti-Semitism”,13 his origin and independent scientific,
civil, and religious views did not find acceptance with the British colonial bureaucracy.
12 In 1899 Bannerman was nominated a managing director, later superintendent, and finally, in 1904, a director of
the Laboratory.
13 Chernin 1991.
176 MARINA SOROKINA
For Haffkine, who was so passionate about his experiments, it was a tragedy to be separated from the
Laboratory and patients. His personal life was also at a low ebb as he was rejected by the woman he loved
about the same time. Haffkine stayed unmarried. In one of his unpublished novels he wrote: “I don’t like
persons demonstrating their feelings to everybody. I prefer individuals with quiet, equal or even cold face
while a huge internal work of intellect and heart is raging within him”. Perhaps these words were a self-
portrait. A very introspective person by nature, he preferred to express his social and political views,
moral priorities, and religious convictions by intense everyday work rather than talking about them.
Haffkine defended his Laboratory and his reputation in letters to different agencies and institutes. In
1907, a Commission of the Lister Institute in England reinvestigated the claim, overturned the decision
of the Inquiry Commission, and exonerated Haffkine. Many respectable colleagues including the Nobel
Prize-winning malaria researcher Ronald Ross, William R. Smith the President of the Council of the
Royal Institute of Public Health and Simon Flexner the Director of Laboratories at New York Rockefeller
Institute signed a letter of support published in e Times (29 July 1907). ey asserted that Haffkine
had done nothing wrong in the Mulkowal Case.
e support of these eminent colleagues helped Haffkine restore his scientific reputation and paved
the way for his return to India in 1908. One of the first welcoming letters he received came from his
FIGURE 12: Incubation Hall, Plague Research Laboratory 1902–3.
Collection of the Jewish National and University Library, Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
BETWEEN FAITH & REASON WALDEMAR HAFFKINE 18601930 IN INDIA 177
FIGURE 13: Haffkine inoculating Indians. Collection of the
Jewish National and University Library, Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
178 MARINA SOROKINA
friend the Aga Khan.14 In Calcutta, Haffkine took up the post of Director-in-Chief of the Biological
Laboratory. But this new laboratory had no facilities for vaccine production. Also, the terms of Haffkine’s
employment restricted his activities to research. ese were hardly ideal conditions for a person whose
aim was to improve the world. e stigma of the Mulkowal disaster still hung over Haffkine.15 On
reaching the minimum retirement age of 55 years in March 1915, he left the Indian Civil Service for
good.
Focus on Jewish Causes and Orthodox Practices
From Calcutta Haffkine went to France where he lived mostly in Boulogne-sur-Mer and Boulogne-sur-
Seine from 1915 until 1928. He traveled around the world, spent much time supporting the Jewish
emancipation movement, and thought about scientific, cultural, and theological aspects of the Jewish
religion.
Historians agree that Haffkine’s return to Judaism and Orthodox Jewish practice occurred about 1915
and usually connect it with “A Plea for Orthodoxy”, his brilliant essay which appeared in 1916 in e
Menorah Journal. Here Haffkine presented himself as a strict advocate of traditional religious observance.
Haffkine had always valued the Jewish religion but while working for multi-national and multi-religious
India, he had preferred to be identified with his professional medical mission rather than with any
religion. After retirement, he felt free to express his personal views and priorities.
Haffkine focused on the welfare of Jews and migration as well as the health and education of the
Jewish people. In 1909 he corresponded with the English Zionist Federation’s Honorary President, Sir
Francis A. Montefiore, and its President, Dr Charles Dreyfus, about the establishment of a microbiological
institute in Palestine. In 1916, he visited Jewish settlements in the United States. In 1923, Haffkine
worked for the establishment of the Faculty of Jewish Studies as a branch of the Hebrew University in
Jerusalem. As a member of the Committee de Patronage of the Faculty, Haffkine prepared a paper called
“Concerning the scheme of a School of High Jewish Learning to be established in Jerusalem” and sent it
to the Chief Rabbi of France, the head of the Committee, but received no positive response.
e following year, Haffkine tried to launch an independent school in Palestine with a Board of
Directors from different countries. It was to be dedicated to reinterpreting the Torah in terms of modern
philosophy and science. It is absolutely necessary to apply the “new” Torah to the needs of the complex
life among nations, he wrote in the proposal to a Pittsburgh banker Sol Rosenbloom, and to bridge the
gap between faith and reason. e plan, as in the case of most of Haffkine’s earlier such initiatives, was
rejected. In his diary Haffkine sadly confessed to himself: “e main feature of my life is solitude”.
In 1926, forty years after leaving the Russian Empire, Hafkine and the Jewish writer Reuben Brainin
revisited Odessa and other cities in the Soviet Union. It was a comprehensive trip in which he toured
the entire country of his birth from Ukraine to Siberia looking at Jewish life and religious education
under the new socialist regime.
In April 1928 he moved to Lausanne, Switzerland, where he remained for the last two years of his
life. Here he made a deposit to the Lausanne bank of 1,568,852 Swiss francs (about $500,000) which,
according to his testament, was to be used to foster religious, scientific, and vocational education in
Eastern European yeshivas through grants. e Haffkine Foundation for the Benefit of Yeshivoth was
created in 1929 and became the last endowment of this philanthropist to the Jewish people and
humanity.
14 http://waller.ub.uu.se/images/Waller_Ms_Haff/00029/f_001a.jpg.
15 Hagwood 2007, p. 16.
BETWEEN FAITH & REASON WALDEMAR HAFFKINE 18601930 IN INDIA 179
Legacy
Waldemar Haffkine passed away in 1930 in Lausanne and was buried at the small Jewish cemetery in
the western suburb of the city. A few obituaries appeared in scientific journals. Professor Sir William
John Ritchie Simpson remembered:
FIGURE 14AC: Haffkine Institute, Mumbai.
Collection of Kenneth and Joyce Robbins.
180 MARINA SOROKINA
He stayed with us several times when in Calcutta . . . he was very likeable and always the same: a courteous and
amiable gentleman, even towards those who opposed him and attacked his views and work; very determined,
remarkable for his powers of work, full of enthusiasm, and with a dauntless courage which was not to be damped
by disappointments.16
Haffkine’s name was then largely forgotten though, in 1925,
the Bombay government renamed the Plague Research
Laboratory as the Haffkine Institute. e rebirth of interest
in Haffkine occurred only after the Holocaust and the deaths
of millions during World War II. Many realized that only the
joint efforts of nations, elites, and individuals can save mankind
from extermination by fanatics and dictators. e changed
world demanded new heroes: upright humanitarians from
amongst the state and religious elites who were also independent
and influential professionals like Waldemar Haffkine, who
always followed his own precepts and believed that the
individual could change a world.
Historians began to study his fate and works anew. In 1959,
Mark Popovskii’s e Story of Doctor Haffkine was published
in Moscow. In 1964, the Nobel Prize winning microbiologist
Selman A. Waksman wrote e Brilliant and Tragic Life of
W.M.W. Haffkine, Bacteriologist in the USA. More recently,
there have been other scholarly studies of his work.17
e governments of India and Israel have issued stamps in honor of him. During the 1960s, thousands
of trees were planted in the famous Kennedy Forest in Jerusalem in memory of this eminent bacteriologist
and Jewish philanthropist. Today, the Haffkine Institute for Training, Research and Testing in Mumbai
continues to be an important center for public health in Asia.
16 e British Medical Journal, 8 November 1930.
17 Löwy 1992; Kumar 1999; Hagwood 2007.
FIGURE 15: Indian stamp depicting Haffkine.