Museum
Albums of bite victims in the Pasteur Museum
The Pasteur Museum has three photo albums of the first patients vaccinated against rabies in 1885 and 1886, before the Institut Pasteur was founded. These precious records have a lot to tell us...
Albums of bite victims
The museum has a unique collection of more than 300 portraits in three albums dubbed the "albums des mordus" (albums of bite victims): women, men and children of all social classes, from France or abroad, were photographed before or after they were vaccinated against rabies by Louis Pasteur's team. Bandages covering their injuries can still be seen in some of the photos. Most of the portraits were taken by photographer Michel Angelidis (1864-1920), whose Paris studios were just 400m away from the Ecole normale supérieure, at 21 rue Vauquelin and 35 rue Claude Bernard. The photos, which were the size of a business card, are mainly aristotypes (a collodion-based industrial process), together with some albumen prints.
Restoring the albums
The three albums are structured in the same way, with thick cardboard pages containing cut-out windows where the photos could be inserted. The pages are bound with cardboard tabs joined together by imitation leather brown paper, and the edges are gilded.
Before being restored, the albums had several visible signs of wear and deterioration: they were dusty, the leather corners were damaged, and some pages were coming loose or had tears.
Estelle Rebourt, a photo restorer, and Annabelle Simon, a restorer of books and bindings, worked on the albums to stabilize their condition.
The albums were cleaned with demineralized water. The pages were treated with a gum eraser. The restorers consolidated them and repaired the tears with Japanese paper. The leather binding was also consolidated and waxed.
The albums are still fragile and should be handled as little as possible. They will be digitized to reduce the number of people who need to consult the originals.
The three albums are currently kept in special custom-designed storage boxes.
Documenting their story...
Many details about the albums are still missing. Who produced them? What exactly for? Why is there no written mention of this album in the report by the Academy of Sciences on March 1, 1886, in which Louis Pasteur refers to the first 500 bite victims? Some are mentioned, but others not...
Chloé Garcia, a first-year Master's student in Cultural and Technical Heritage at Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, supervised by Jean-Luc Chappey,[1] is trying to find out more about the identity and history of the people in the photos. Their stories represent a fascinating and compelling source of material for the future Pasteur Museum.
If you are interested in the latest museum news, have any questions or are in possession of any technical or scientific objects that can provide clues to the past activities of the Institut Pasteur's laboratories, feel free to contact the museum team at musee@pasteur.fr and follow us on social media (LinkedIn, Instagram).
[1] Auteur de Pasteur et les antivax, publié en 2025