He is recognized as the first microbiologist who developed and used vaccines against cholera and bubonic plague. He tested the vaccines on himself. Lord Joseph Lister named him "a saviour of humanity."

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.

... Waldemar Haffkine , a familiar figure to her as the inventor of a vaccine for bubonic plague . In the course of her work in the copious archival holdings on him at YIVO at ... Waldemar Haffkine , Medical Science , and Jewish Idealism Evelyn.

This is what the world has just gone through with Covid-19. But as Simon Schama shows in his epic history of vulnerable humanity caught between the terror of contagion and the ingenuity of science, it has happened before.