In the 1880s, Dr. Robert Koch discovered cholera bacteria, traveling from Germany to Egypt and India during outbreaks. They confirmed the bacteria during autopsies and concluded it was linked to infected water supplies. Koch also discovered that people infected with cholera were protected from it afterwards.

In 1885, Spanish doctor Jaime Ferran, who studied under Louis Pasteur (Koch’s rival), created the first cholera vaccine from working with live bacteria. He did a mass vaccination (50,000 people) during an outbreak in Spain.

Two scientists, Sawtschenko and Sabolotny, experimented with a killed cholera bacteria “broth” in 1893, which prevented cholera but was impractical because it required many doses.

Several cholera vaccines were invented worldwide, including Haffkine’s vaccine trials in India in 1893, and his heat-killed vaccine in 1911. In 1927, Alexandre Besredka’s oral bilivaccine was tested in India and China alongside an injected vaccine. At the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from 1943 until her retirement in 1971, Dr. Margaret Pittman worked to assess the efficacy of and establish national and international standards for the production of the cholera vaccine.