Before the invention of an effective vaccine for anthrax, the disease was a major agricultural problem and economic burden. Anthrax is a potentially fatal disease that affects animals and humans and is spread via airborne spores. Before it was fully understood, the illness was referred to as "ragpickers' disease" or "woolsorter's disease" because it was mostly caught by people working closely with animal hides.
In 1877, the Prussian physician Robert Koch (1843-1910) finally made a link between anthrax infection and a spore-forming bacteria called Bacillus anthracis. In the late nineteenth century, renowned scientist Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) developed a two-dose vaccine for anthrax that he had tested on sheep. However, storage quickly reduced the efficacy of the vaccine, and its effect was sometimes fatal.
It was the Australian scientist John McGarvie Smith (1844-1918) and his research collaborator, John Gunn (1860-1910), who eventually developed a safe, single-dose vaccine. Though the the two men shared an amicable relationship, neither one ever conceded that the other was responsible for the invention. Following Gunn's death in 1910, Smith refused to make the formula public and even resorted to setting up a laboratory in his own home to start production of the vaccine.
After years of resisting pressure by Australia's Minister of Agriculture, W. C. Grahame, to divulge the secret, Smith's health was deteriorating and he finally agreed to make his work public. In 1918, he handed over the desperately sought formula to Dr. Frank Edgar Wall on behalf of the State government. Smith also donated $10,000 to set up the John McGarvie Smith Institute where his vaccine could be mass-produced and distributed.
