"The Ongoing Story of the Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) Vaccination"

Albert Calmette (1863–1933) was a well-known French physician and bacteriologist. He started his career as a naval medical officer and participated in several expeditions to the French colonies, including Saint-Pierre et Miquelon and Gabon. In 1891, he founded the Pasteur Institute in Saigon in French Indo-China, which is now Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, and became its first head. He returned to France in 1894 and was asked to found another Pasteur Institute in Lille in Northern France, where he worked as its manager from 1896 to 1919. At the same time, he was professor of bacteriology and hygiene. He inaugurated the first dispensary for tuberculosis in 1901, and in 1917, he became deputy chief of the main Pasteur Institute in Paris. His most important investigations concerned snake venoms and the serum therapies needed to treat them. He also investigated hookworm disease and plague and had a special interest in tuberculosis (TB). Albert Calmette was the brother of Gaston Calmette, the editor-in-chief of the French newspaper Le Figaro. In January 1914, Gaston started a smear campaign against the then French Minister of Finance Caillaux in the newspaper. The campaign came to a dramatic end on March 13, 1914, when Henriette Caillaux, the minister’s wife, went to the editorial office and shot Gaston to death. She was found not guilty in the following high-profile trial.