John Alexander GunnPrint Page

The plaque commemorates John Alexander Gunn (1860 - 1910) who experimented on this site and produced the first anthrax vaccine in Australia. John Gunn was also a New South Wales polictician.

John Gunn built his own laboratory in 1890 on Yalgogrin Run, the property he was managing for R Goldsbrough and Co. Anthrax was the scourge of the industry at the time, killing more than 30 per cent of sheep flocks and other livestock with more than 270,000 sheep known to be lost to the disease in the Riverina District. The double dose vaccine developed in 1881 by the Louis Pasteur Institute in Paris could not survive shipment or outback climatic conditions, and the regime of two vaccinations administered fourteen days apart was a particular problem on the sprawling Australia sheep runs.

John Gunn had many supporters in his endeavour, including Frank Stewart of Bygoo Station, Ardlethan, and Arthur Devlin of Uarah Station near Grong Grong. Devlin had begun work in 1890 with French scientists in an attempt to manufacture the French vaccine in Sydney, but by 1897, John Gunn succeeded in producing a serum which was effective in one dose and could be kept almost indefinitely. His first attempt to reproduce the serum was unsuccessful, but fortunately this was achieved a few days later by John McGarvie Smith. The two men formed a partnership which continued until Gunn`s death in 1910.

John Gunn Death 1910

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