You’re unlikely to know of Alexandre Yersin and his “remarkable contributions to science and medicine,” says Well Known Places. But thanks to the curatorial comments accompanying the exhibits in this “small, modest museum,” you will leave with “an appreciation and understanding of his extraordinary life and accomplishments.” The museum retraces the life of this scientist from his birth in Switzerland in 1863 to his death in Nha Trang in 1943, explains Michelin Travel. Founded with the help of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, the Pasteur Museum and the Institute of the History of Medicine in Lausanne, it displays “many of his work instruments and personal items, as well as documents relating to his numerous activities and untiring scientific curiosity.”
The museum “provides insight into the life and work of an unsung hero,” writes Travelfish. “Among his many accomplishments, he discovered the bacillus of the bubonic plague that made it possible to create a serum to fight the disease.” Yersin’s connection to Nha Trang is “an interesting one” -- after studying and making discoveries on tuberculosis and diphtheria in Paris, he decided to travel and in 1890 “became the ship doctor for a Far East shipping line,” before joining the medical corps in southeast China where “a plague epidemic had broken out with a 95% mortality rate.” He later decided to settle in Nha Trang “and eventually founded the city’s Institut Pasteur in 1895.”