The Indian postal services today issued a new stamp bearing the image of Dr. Waldemar Mordecai Haffkine, a Russian-born Jewish scientist who lived in India during the latter part of the 19th century when he was credited with successfully curtailing the death rate among the epidemic ridden population by developing new inoculation techniques. He died in 1930 in Lausanne, Switzerland.
After earning a doctorate in biology at the University of Odessa, Haffkine was sent to India in 1893 where he was remarkably successful in combatting an epidemic of cholera and later in sharply reducing the mortality rate in an epidemic of the bubonic plague. He was extremely popular among the Indian population who referred to him as the “White Magician. “
After settling in France and Switzerland in 1915, Dr. Haffkine became an Orthodox Jew and devoted his later years to Jewish scholarship. He left a large part of his fortune to establish the Haffkine Foundation, the income of which was used to support East European yeshivas.
The Indian postal services issued earlier stamps honoring Haffkine on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of his birth and marking the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Haffkine Clinic in India.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
