A nine-year-old boy was the first person ever saved from rabies by a vaccine

In 1885, Joseph Meister was bitten fourteen times by a rabid dog. Louis Pasteur, who had only tested his rabies vaccine on animals, gave the boy an untested series of injections over ten days. Meister survived, and the treatment became the template for post-exposure rabies vaccination still used today.

— Louis Pasteur, Rabies vaccine — First human trial, 1885