Joseph Meister

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Joseph Meister (February 21 1876 - June 16 1940) was the first person to be inoculated against rabies by Louis Pasteur, and the first person to be successfully treated for the disease.

In 1885, the nine-year-old Meister was bitten by a rabid dog. Pasteur decided to treat the boy with a rabies virus grown in rabbits and weakened by drying, a treatment he had earlier tried on dogs. The treatment was successful and the boy did not develop rabies.

As an adult, Meister served as a caretaker at the Pasteur Institute until his death in 1940 at age 64. During the Nazi occupation of Paris, he reportedly chose to commit suicide by shooting himself with his World War I service revolver rather than allow the Wehrmacht to enter the Pasteur’s crypt.