The creation of the first overseas Pasteur Institute, or the beginning of Albert Calmette's Pastorian career

Medical History

Volumn 43, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 1-25

  Guénel, Annick ^a  

^a HÔPITAL NECKER ENFANTS MALADES   (France)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CHOLERA VACCINE; RABIES VACCINE; SNAKE VENOM;

ARTICLE; FRANCE; HISTORY; ORGANIZATION; TROPICAL MEDICINE;

ACADEMIES AND INSTITUTES; CHOLERA VACCINES; FRANCE; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; RABIES VACCINES; SNAKE VENOMS; TROPICAL MEDICINE;

EID: 0032600539     PISSN: 00257273     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0025727300064693     Document Type: Article

References (117)

1. On Loir's missions in Australia, from 1888 to 1893, see Jean Chaussivert, 'L'Institut Pasteur d'Australie', in M Morange (ed.). L'institut Pasteur. Contributions à son histoire, Paris, La Découverte, 1991, pp. 242-52.
2. Anne Marie Moulin, 'Révolutions médicales et révolutions politiques en Egypte', Revue du monde musulman et de la Méditerranée, 1989, 52-53: 112-23, pp. 115-16.
3. Idem, 'Bacteriological research and medical practice in and out of the Pastorian School', in A La Berge and M Feingold (eds), French medical culture in the nineteenth century, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1994, pp. 327-49, on p. 329.
4. The Pasteur Institute was tied to the Pharo School through its disciples. For example, PaulLouis Simond, a Pastorian who discovered in India the flea's role in transmitting the plague bacillus, was the School's first assistant-director.
5. Michael Worboys, 'Manson, Ross and colonial medical policy: tropical medicine in London and Liverpool, 1899-1914', in R MacLeod and M Lewis (eds), Disease, medicine and empire: perspectives on western medicine and the experience of European expansion, London and New York, Routledge, 1988, pp. 21-37, on pp. 25-8.
6. Michael Worboys, 'The emergence of tropical medicine: a study in the establishment of a scientific specialty', in G Lemaine, R MacLeod, M Mulkay and P Weingart (eds), Perspectives on the emergence of scientific disciplines. The Hague, Mouton, 1976, pp. 75-98.
7. Archives of the Pasteur Institute in Paris (APIP), Fonds Calmette. Most of the documents are letters from Calmette to his family; only the other correspondents will be mentioned.
8. See Roy MacLeod, 'Introduction', in MacLeod and Lewis (eds), op. cit., note 5 above, pp. 1-18, on p. 3.
9. Albert Calmette, 'Etude critique sur l'étiologie et la pathogénie des maladies tropicales attribuées à la filaire du sang humain', medical thesis, Paris, 1885-86.
10. APIP, Fonds Indochine, Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, 22 February 1890.
11. Albert Calmette, 'Maladie du sommeil et ses rapports avec la pellagre', Archives de médecine navale, 1888, 50: 321-39. See also, Noël Bernard, La vie et l'oeuvre d'Albert Calmette, Paris, Albin Michel, 1961, p. 58.
12. Albert Calmette, 'Maladie du sommeil et ses rapports avec la pellagre', Archives de médecine navale, 1888, 50: 321-39. See also, Noël Bernard, La vie et l'oeuvre d'Albert Calmette, Paris, Albin Michel, 1961, p. 58.
13. APIP, Saigon, 5 October 1891.
14. Armand Corre, Traité clinique des maladies des pays chauds, Paris, Octave Doin, 1887. Corre, who in 1890 was already an old man, withdrew from his participation in the new treatise, 'Traité de géographie médicale et de climatologie générale du globe'. Calmette took the manuscript with him to Saigon, but the book was never published.
15. APIP, Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, letter to Corre, 7 April 1890.
16. Noël Bernard, Pastorian and Calmette's biographer, emphasized that Calmette had been one of the "first subscribers to the Annales de l'Institut Pasteur": op. cit., note 11 above, p. 63. Regarding Calmette's training project at the Pasteur Institute, see his correspondence: APIP, Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, 22 February, 16 April and 22 August 1890.
17. For a general review of the French colonial doctors, see Pierre Pluchon (ed.), Histoire des médecins et pharmaciens de marine et des colonies, Toulouse, Bibliothèque Historique Privat, 1985. For the particular case of Indochina, see Laurence Monnais-Rousselot, 'Médecine coloniale, pratiques de santé et sociétés en Indochine française (1860-1939). Une histoire de l'Indochine médicale', PhD thesis, University of Paris VII, 1997, pp. 371-606.
18. For a general review of the French colonial doctors, see Pierre Pluchon (ed.), Histoire des médecins et pharmaciens de marine et des colonies, Toulouse, Bibliothèque Historique Privat, 1985. For the particular case of Indochina, see Laurence Monnais-Rousselot, 'Médecine coloniale, pratiques de santé et sociétés en Indochine française (1860-1939). Une histoire de l'Indochine médicale', PhD thesis, University of Paris VII, 1997, pp. 371-606.
19. Charles-Robert Ageron, France coloniale ou parti colonial?, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1976.
20. Calmette himself probably gave his support to this legend. See the posthumous eulogy by Pasteur Vallery-Radot, 'Albert Calmette', Revue des Deux Mondes, 15 January 1934.
21. Archives d'Outre-Mer, Aix-en-Provence (AOM), Indochine, Amiraux, 2511: Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies to the General Governor in Indochina, 27 December 1890, 'Création à Saigon d'un institut de bactériologie'.
22. Some years earlier, Gaston Calmette had recommended his brother to Pierre Savorgnan De Brazza, at that time Commissaire Général of the French Government in the Congo. Albert Calmette gave up the prospect of an "African career" because of his marriage. See Bernard, op. cit., note 11 above, p. 54.
23. APIP, Lamballe, 28 July 1890.
24. Ibid., 6 September 1890.
25. Bernard, op. cit., note 11 above, p. 45.
26. The rough draft was sent to Corre on 10 October 1890: APIP, Fonds Indochine. Concerning the official documents, see note 19 above.
27. APIP, ibid.
28. When Treille visited the Pasteur Institute, Calmette wished, by making this comparison, to praise the future Saigon Laboratory: APIP, letter to Corre, 17 October 1890.
29. The second Overseas Pasteur Institute was created in Tunis at the request of French settlers in order to improve vinification. Regarding the Tunis Institute, see Kimberly A Pelis, 'Pasteur's imperial missionary: Charles Nicolle (1866-1936) and the Pasteur Institute of Tunis', PhD thesis, Johns Hopkins University, 1995.
30. APIP, Strait of Malacca, 3 February 1891.
31. Gerald L Geison, The private science of Louis Pasteur, Princeton University Press, 1995, p. 273. On the "Pasteur myth", see also, Anne Marie Moulin, 'Patriarchal science: the network of the overseas Pasteur Institutes', in P Petitjean, C Jami and A M Moulin (eds), Science and empires: historical studies about scientific development and European expansion, Dordrecht, Klüwer Academic Publishers, 1992, pp. 307-22, on pp. 310-1.
32. Gerald L Geison, The private science of Louis Pasteur, Princeton University Press, 1995, p. 273. On the "Pasteur myth", see also, Anne Marie Moulin, 'Patriarchal science: the network of the overseas Pasteur Institutes', in P Petitjean, C Jami and A M Moulin (eds), Science and empires: historical studies about scientific development and European expansion, Dordrecht, Klüwer Academic Publishers, 1992, pp. 307-22, on pp. 310-1.
33. Anne Marie Moulin, 'Les instituts Pasteur de la Méditerranée arabe. Une religion scientifique en pays d'Islam', in E Longuenesse (ed.), Santé, médecine et société dans le inonde arabe, Paris, L'Harmattan, 1995, pp. 130-64, on pp. 135-6.
34. Pelis, op. cit., note 27 above, p. 123-51.
35. For a comparison with the strategies of laboratory development in British India, see Mark Harrison, Public health in British India: AngloIndian preventive medicine 1859-1914, Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 112-13, 150-2.
36. APIP, Paris, 17 December 1890.
37. Ibid., 28 July 1890.
38. AOM, Fonds Ministériels/ancien fonds, 324: "Cochinchine. Hôpitaux, 1861-63"; Amiraux 10542: "Hôpital Choquan, 1885". See also, MonnaisRousselot, op. cit., note 16 above, pp. 120-6.
39. APIP, Paris, 9 December 1890.
40. 33 APIP, Saigon, 8 May 1891.
41. Fernand-P Burot and Maximilien-A Legrand, Le s troupes coloniales. Maladies du soldat aux pays chauds, Paris, J B Baillière, 1897, p. 52.
42. See Philip D Curtin, Death by migration: Europe 's encounter with the tropical world in the nineteenth century, Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp. 13, 18, 30, 108.
43. Ibid., pp. 147-50.
44. Auguste-F Dutroulau, Trairé des maladies des européens clans les pays chauds (régions tropicales). Climatologie, maladies endémiques, Paris, J B Baillière, 1861, pp. 402-62.
45. E Bertrand et J A Fontan, 'L'entéro-colite des pays chauds', Archives de médecine navale, 1886,45: 211-29, 266-308, 321-78, p. 229.
46. Albert Calmette, 'Etude expérimentale de la dysenterie ou entéro-colite des pays chauds', Archives de médecine navale et coloniale, 1893, 59-60: 207-23, 261-80, 335-46, pp. 261-2.
47. Ibid., p. 262.
48. APIP, Saigon, 22 May 1891.
49. Ibid., 4 July 1891.
50. Ibid., 30 January 1892.
51. Albert Calmette, 'Note sur la présence du bacille pyocyanique dans le sang et l'intestin de dysentériques en Cochinchine', Archives de médecine navale et coloniale, 1892, 57: 277-80.
52. Calmette, op. cit., note 44 above, p. 277.
53. Stephanos Kartulis, 'Einiges über die Pathogenese der Dysenterieamöben', Centralblatt für Bakteriologie und Parasitenkiunde, 1891, 9: 365-72; Alphonse Laveran and Arnold Netter, 'Deux observations d'abcès du foie. Examen histologique et bactériologique du pus de ces abcès', Bulletins et mémoires de la Société des Hôpitaux de Paris, 1890, 7 (3ème sér.): 691-7.
54. Stephanos Kartulis, 'Einiges über die Pathogenese der Dysenterieamöben', Centralblatt für Bakteriologie und Parasitenkiunde, 1891, 9: 365-72; Alphonse Laveran and Arnold Netter, 'Deux observations d'abcès du foie. Examen histologique et bactériologique du pus de ces abcès', Bulletins et mémoires de la Société des Hôpitaux de Paris, 1890, 7 (3ème sér.): 691-7.
55. Calmette, op. cit., note 44 above, p. 338.
56. Ibid., p. 221.
57. Kartulis, op. cit., note 51 above.
58. Calmette, op. cit., note 44 above, p. 342.
59. APIP, Saigon, 28 February 1891.
60. However, Calmette was candidate for a French scientific award ("prix Blache"), following his works on dysentery. As he wrote: "I am not actually afraid of any serious rival for this award given by the Navy Ministry".
61. See liana Löwy, 'From guinea pig to man: the development of Haffkine's anticholera vaccine', J. Hist. Med. Allied Sci., 1992, 47: 270-309.
62. Albert Calmette, 'Recherches expérimentales sur le choléra asiatique Indochinois et sur l'immunisation chimique des animaux contre cette maladie', Archives de médecine navale et coloniale, 1893, 59: 216-67, pp. 218-23.
63. Ibid., pp. 262-5.
64. APIP, Saigon, 24 September 1892.
65. Ibid., 2 October 1892.
66. Ibid., 28 January 1893.
67. Ibid., letter to Corre, 2 May 1893.
68. Calmette, op. cit., note 59, p. 266.
69. See Ilana Löwy, 'Le vaccin anticholérique à l'Institut Pasteur (1890-1895): Haffkine, Metchnikoff, Roux', in A M Moulin (ed), L'aventure de la vaccination, Paris, Fayard, 1996, pp. 195-209, on p. 207.
70. Annick Guénel, 'Lutte contre la variole en Indochine: variolisation contre vaccination?', Hist. Philos. Life Sci., 1995, 17: 55-79.
71. See "Documents relatifs à la rage humaine canine en Indochine", included in: Albert Calmette, 'Notes sur la rage en Indo-Chine et sur les vaccinations antirabiques pratiquées à Saigon du 15 avril au ler août 1891, Annales de l'Institut Pasteur, 1891, B: 633-41, pp. 639-41.
72. APIP, Strait of Malacca, 3 February 1891.
73. AOM, Gouvernement General, 23 882: "Institut bactériologique de Saïgon, organisation, rapports médicaux du Dr Calmette 1891-93".
74. For more about Calmette's report of the event: APIP, Saigon, 7 November 1891. Afterwards, because of the publicity concerning Calmette's work on snake venom, there were also many other reports in colonial newspapers on the event or on related subjects. Thus, Le Cochinchinois published, one year later, an article ascribed to a Vietnamese practitioner (1, 8, 22 and 29 November 1892), entitled 'Revelations by an Annamite snake charmer'. The aim of this publication was, of course, to emphasize the "quackery" of native treatments against snakebites.
75. Albert Calmette, 'Etude expérimentale du venin de Naja tripudians ou cobra capel et exposé d'une méthode de neutralisation de ce venin dans l'organisme'. Archives de médecine navale et coloniale, 1892, 57: 161-90, p. 188.
76. APIP, Saigon, 30 January 1892.
77. Albert Calmette, 'Contribution à l'étude du venin des serpents. Immunisation des animaux et traitement de l'envenimation', Annales de L'Institut Pasteur, 1894, 8: 275-91, p. 284.
78. See Edgar Relyveld and Maurice Huet, 'Une histoire des anatoxines', in Moulin (ed.), op. cit., note 66 above, pp. 248-64, on p. 250.
79. Calmette administered either low and repeated venom quantities, or a venom-alkaline hypochlorite or a venom-gold chloride mixture, or heated venom. However, he noticed that some compounds, such as sodium hypochlorite or chloride of lime, produced similar results without being mixed with venom: Calmette, op. cit., note 74 above, pp. 28CM.
80. Albert Calmette, 'Sur le mécanisme de l'immunisation contre les venins', Annales de L'Institut Pasteur, 1898, 12: 343-7.
81. Régie : this was the state administration for levying excise duties and for overseeing state monopolies such as alcohol, tobacco, etc.
82. See, in particular, Chantal Descours-Gatin, Quand l'opium finançait la colonisation en Indochine. L'élaboration de la régie générale de l'opium (1860-1914), Paris, L'Harmattan, 1992.
83. APIP, 9 December 1890. Calmette also remarked that the colonial newspaper L'avenir du Tonkin had dedicated a whole article to this figure: ibid., Saigon, 28 February 1891.
84. Ibid., 14 March 1891.
85. Albert Calmette, 'Le ferment de l'opium des fumeurs et la fermentation artificielle des chandoos', Archives de médecine navale et coloniale, 1892, 57: 132-8, pp. 136-7.
86. Ibid., p. 137. See also the letter from the Régie surveyor, named Martin, dated 11 October 1891, added to Calmette's correspondance in the APIP.
87. APIP, Saigon, 2 January 1892.
88. Ibid., 12 September 1891.
89. Albert Calmette, 'Contribution à l'étude des ferments de l'amidon. La levure chinoise'. Annales de l'Institut Pasteur, 1892, 6: 604-20, pp. 611-12, 619.
90. On this subject, Calmette also sent letters to the Lieutenant Governor of Cochin-China, to the General Government of Indochina and even to the Under-Secrctary of State for the Colonies in 1892: AOM, Gouvernement Général, 23881.
91. The first candidate (named Blanchet) was the Messageries fluviales director. Calmette hoped to take part in any financial gain: APIP, Saigon, 2 July 1892. But another industrial man. Fontaine, played a more important part in this business. In 1899, he arranged an agreement with Calmette in order to use the patent and to ask for the alcohol monopoly in Annam: AOM, Gouvernement Général, 8908 and 4178.
92. Justin Godart, Rapport de mission en Indochine, Ier janvier-14 mars 1937, Paris, L'Harmattan, 1994, pp. 133-49.
93. APIP, Saigon, 5 January 1892.
94. Among other publications, see Charles Meyer, La vie quotidienne des français en Indochine, 1860-1910, Paris, Hachette, 1985, pp. 68-104.
95. APIP, Saigon, 28 February 1891.
96. Ibid., 13 February 1892.
97. For more about De Lanessan's colonial politics, see Charles Fourniau, Annam-Tonkin, 1885-1896. Lettrés et paysans vietnamiens face à la conquête coloniale, Paris, L'Harmattan, 1989, pp. 185-233. Regarding his scientific career: Damien Deschamps, 'Les sources scientifiques et la politique indochinoise de Jean-Louis de Lanessan', in Viêt-Nam. Sources et approches, Aix-en-Provence, Publications de l'Université de Provence, 1996, pp. 279-92.
98. For more about De Lanessan's colonial politics, see Charles Fourniau, Annam-Tonkin, 1885-1896. Lettrés et paysans vietnamiens face à la conquête coloniale, Paris, L'Harmattan, 1989, pp. 185-233. Regarding his scientific career: Damien Deschamps, 'Les sources scientifiques et la politique indochinoise de Jean-Louis de Lanessan', in Viêt-Nam. Sources et approches, Aix-en-Provence, Publications de l'Université de Provence, 1996, pp. 279-92.
99. APIP, Saigon, 7 November 1891, 30 January and 24 September 1892.
100. Ibid., 26 August and 5 November 1892.
101. He wrote with some disdain that he had been favoured with decorations from the Cambodian kingdom, from the Philippine consulate in Saigon, he had become an honorary member of an Egyptian Institute, and so on. But he was vexed not to have been honoured by the Dutch government, and did not wish to come into contact with the consul in Saigon who "is only a consular agent, of Prussian nationality and, at the same time, consul of Germany": ibid., 28 January 1893.
102. Ibid., 5 October 1891.
103. Calmette, op. cit., note 86 above, p. 607.
104. Idem, 'Le rôle des sciences médicales dans la colonisation', Revue scientifique, 1905, 3: 417-21, p. 417.
105. Ibid., p. 418.
106. In 1914, Calmette, at the time director of Pasteur Institute in Lille, took the initiative to begin studies on "nuoc-mam" (an important traditional food product obtained by fish fermentation in Vietnam). A food control service was set up in the Pasteur Institute in Saigon, allowing the colonial administration to regulate the sale of nuoc-mam. See J Guillerm, L'industrie du nuoc-mam en Indochine, Saigon, Imprimerie A Portail, 1931, p. 7.
107. It was ratified by the successive Pasteur Institute's agreements with the General Government in Indochina. The 1925 agreement, negotiated by Noël Bernard, included a third Indochinese Institute, in Hanoi, and reinforced the "monopoly" of the Pasteur Institute in many health-related issues, such as biological and chemical analyses, vaccine production, and so on. For more about the agreements and the annual reports on the activities of Pasteur Institutes in Indochina, see: APIP, Fonds Indochine.
108. Such as the BCG vaccination. See Noël Bernard and Jean Bablet, 'Premiers essais en Cochinchine de la vaccination antituberculeuse des nourrissons par injection de bacilles B.C.G.', Bulletin de la Société Médico-chirurgicale de l'Indochine, 1925, 4: 192-6.
109. In his correspondence, he did not express the wish to stay in Saigon beyond the end of his regular service time in Indochina and the appointment of a new laboratory director. His Pasteur Institute colleagues and biographers also said he was affected by chronic dysentery and asked to come back to France for this reason.
110. APIP, Saigon, 10 October 1891.
111. Ibid., letter to Corre, 17 February 1893.
112. See David Arnold, Colonizing the body: state medicine and epidemic disease in nineteenth-century India, London, University of California Press, 1993, pp. 61-115.
113. L A Bordes, Le paludisme en Indochine (Historique, épidémiologie, état actuel de la lutte antipalustre), Hanoi, Imprimerie A Portail, 1931, pp. 15-17.
114. Because of the Pasteur Institute's difficulties in finding directors among the Corps de Santé des Troupes Coloniales, Yersin had to take on the double directorship of the Saigon and Nha Trang Institutes in 1901.
115. Arnold, op. cit., note 108 above, pp. 9-10.
116. See, in particular, Nguyên Van Huong, Hành trinh môt doi ngnoi. Ciiôc boi bac si Nguyên Van Huong, T.P. Hô-Chi-Minh, Nhà xuât ban van nghê, 1991, pp. 23-4.
117. Pierre Sureau and Michel Barme, 'Les dernières années de l'Institut Pasteur de Hanoi (1945-1956)', not published, 1992.