El Instituto de Higiene Militar y la creación del laboratorio de vacuna antirrábica

Abstract

The success of the rabies vaccine discovered by Pasteur was attended with a wide dissemination and impact throughout the world. The finding gave way to a model of science that materialized in the foundation of the Pasteur Institute, center that was erected as the international reference for training and acquisition of new scientific knowledge.For this reason, and as an example of file transfer and update of scientific developments, were commissioned two groups of doctors of the Spanish Military Health Service, one in 1886 and the next in 1901, to obtain a pre-emptive treatment effective against rabies, which would reduce the morbidity and mortality of the disease. A few contacts that threw various reports intended for the assessment of the implementation of the rabies vaccine among the troops, and that, together with an analysis of various primary sources preserved in the Military file of Segovia, identify the main characteristics that wrapped around to the creation of a laboratory for processing and production of rabies vaccine in the Military Institute of Hygiene in Madrid, in force until the last quarter of the twentieth century.