Alexandre Yersin (1863-1943)

Two volumes, typescript with illustrations, describing Yersin's travels in Vietnam prior to and following on from his published account.

c.1892-1894

2 volumes

Swiss-born French bacteriologist. One of the discoverers of the bubonic plague bacillus Pasteurella pestis now called Yersinia pestis.

Alexandre Yersin studied medicine in Switzerland, Germany and France, 1883-1886 and took up a post in Louis Pasteur's research Laboratory at the École Normale Supérieure by invitation of Emile Roux. He was involved in the development in anti-rabies serum, 1885, and in 1888 completed his doctoral dissertation on septicaemic tuberculosis. He spent two months in Germany with Robert Koch. In 1889 he and Emile Roux discovered the diphtheric toxin produced by the Corynebacterium diphtheriae bacillus.

In 1890 Yersin travelled to French Indochina as a physician with the Messageries Maritimes, a freight shipping company. In 1894 he was sent by the French government and Pasteur Institute to Hong-Kong to study the ongoing Plague epidemic. Yersin and co-researcher Shibasaburo Kitasato there discovered the pathogen which caused the disease and demonstrated its presence in both the rodent and human disease. The discovery was published by his colleague Emile Duclaux in a classic paper titled 'La Peste Bubonique A Hong-Kong (Ann. Inst. Pasteur. 8: 662-667).

Yersin continued to study bubonic plague, returning to the Institute Pasteur in 1895 and helping to prepare the first anti-pest serum. He also returned to Indochina and established a laboratory at Nha Trang to manufacture the serum. He tried the serum received from Paris in Canton, Amoy and Bombay, but with disappointing results (1896-1897).

Yersin took up residence in Nha Trang, 200 miles up the coast from Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) and lived in Indochina for most of his adult life. He participated in the creation of the Medical School of Hanoi in 1902, becoming its first Director.

In 1934 Yersin was nominated honorary director of the Pasteur Institute and a member of its Board of Administration.

Yersin was and still is renowned in Vietnam, where he was christened 'Ong Nam' or Fifth Uncle. Vietnam continues to have streets named in his honor and his tomb in Suoi Dau bears a pagoda where rites of worship are performed. His house in Nha Trang was turned into the Yersin Museum.

He died at his home in Nha Trang in 1943.

During his lifetime Yersin travelled widely around South East Asia. He had a taste for adventure and his surveying expeditions were well documented in the 100s of letters he wrote back to his mother in Switzerland. In 1891 when his contract with the shipping company Messageries ended he embarked on a major expedition from Nha Trang to Phnom Penh in Cambodia. He was given an award by the French Geographic Society for this expedition. During trips back to Europe, accounts of his voyages provided much entertainment for his family and scientific colleagues, including his former boss Louis Pasteur. Whilst employed by the French Colonial Health Service (from 1893) he organised arduous mapping expeditions into central Vietnam. During one of his trips he famously encountered, and according to his own account, helped put down a rebel uprising against the French colonial government.

In the course of his career in Indochina Yersin helped coordinate a network of medical laboratories and vaccination centres, distributed quinine to the population and introduced the cultivation of rubber (importing rubber trees from Brazil). Yersin also did work for the Indochina Meteorological Service, producing charts and tide tables for navigating Vietnamese coastal waters.

Yersin wrote an account of some of his travels which seems to have been published in book or journal format at the time. See Alexandre Yersin, un passe-muraille (1863-1943): vainqueur de la peste et de la diphtérie, explorateur des huats plateaux d'Indochine by Pierre Le Roux, which includes a reprint of an account by Yersin 'Sept mois chez les Moïs [Texte imprimé]: voyage de Saïgon à Nha-Trang et de Nha-Trang à Bien-Hoa, du 24 décembre 1892 au 5 septembre 1893', preface by Jean-Louis Sarthou (Conaissances et Savoirs, Paris 2007). Unfortunately a copy of this book or the original account has not been traced in this country. The two typescripts in this collection, MSS.8607-8608, appear to be an account written before and just after the untraced account.

Sources: Encyclopedia Britannica online, Wikipedia and William Burns, Alexandre Yersin and his adventures in Vietnam (Mill Hill Essays, 2003).

Papers relating to Yersin's scientific career are held by the Pasteur Institute, Paris, France.

Archives and Manuscripts online catalogue.