Albert Calmette
Léon Charles Albert Calmette ( born July 12, 1863 in Nice, † October 29th 1933 in Paris) was a French physician, bacteriologist and immunologist.
He discovered the Bacillus Calmette- Guérin, a vaccine against tuberculosis and developed the Calmette- serum against the action of snake bites.
Calmette wanted to be a doctor and sailors. He attended from 1881 the School of Naval doctors in Brest. Beginning in 1883, he served in Hong Kong, where he won knowledge about malaria; he wrote in 1886 his doctoral thesis about it. Later he served in West Africa in Gabon and French Congo, where he studied malaria, sleeping sickness and pellagra.
After his return to France in 1890, he met with Louis Pasteur and Émile Roux, whose staff he was. Pasteur commissioned him to establish a branch of the Institut Pasteur in Saigon in 1891.
There he discovered the toxicology as a research and field of activity. He examined the effects of snake and bee venoms and toxins of plants.
In 1894 he returned to France. He developed the Calmette- serum against the action of snake bites. He also works on the development of a serum against the plague. In Portugal, he helped in the fight against the plague in Porto.
1895, the leadership of the Institute in Lille, he was entrusted. In 1909 he established a new office in Algiers. In 1904 he founded the " Ligue du Nord contre la tuberculosis " in Lille, which still exists today.
From 1918 he worked as a director at the Institute in Paris.
Calmette went into the history of medicine primarily an account of his struggle against tuberculosis. He worked with Camille Guérin not only an effective vaccine, but also a vaccination program against at the time lethal for the masses of people affected disease.
The vaccination program suffered a setback in 1930 on the occasion of become known as the Lübeck Impfunglück scandal, in which 72 children died because of faulty Sera of the Institute. 1932 was accepted into many countries, the mass vaccination of children again, but Calmette had been hit hard by the scandal. He died a year later in Paris.
Albert Calmette was the brother of Gaston Calmette (1858-1914), editor of the newspaper Le Figaro.