On 6 July 1885, Louis Pasteur vaccinated Joseph Meister, a 9-year-old boy who had been severely bitten by a rabid dog. It was the first human application of a rabies vaccine, and Pasteur did it knowing he risked both the boy's death and his own reputation. Meister survived. The case triggered a wave of international demand, and in 1888 the Institut Pasteur was founded to produce and distribute the vaccine. With rabies, Pasteur closed the cycle he had opened in 1879: attenuation as a method, anthrax as public demonstration, rabies as proof of human application. Modern vaccinology is born here as an applied discipline.