1. Albert Calmette co-discovered the Bacillus Calmette-Guerin, an attenuated form of Mycobacterium bovis used in the BCG vaccine against tuberculosis.
12 Facts About Albert Calmette
1. 2.
Albert Calmette developed the first antivenom for snake venom, the Calmette's serum.
3.
Albert Calmette wanted to serve in the Navy and be a physician, so in 1881 he joined the School of Naval Physicians at Brest.
4.
Albert Calmette started to serve in 1883 in the Naval Medical Corps in Hong Kong, where he worked with Patrick Manson, who studied the mosquito transmission of the parasitic worm, filaria, the cause of elephantiasis.
5.
Albert Calmette was then assigned to Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, where he arrived in 1887.
6.
Albert Calmette became an associate and was charged by Pasteur to found and direct a branch of the Pasteur Institute at Saigon, in 1891.
7.
Albert Calmette organized the production of the existing vaccines against smallpox and rabies and carried out research on cholera, and the fermentation of opium and rice.
8.
Albert Calmette took part in the development in the first immune serum against the bubonic plague, in collaboration with the discoverer of its pathogenic agent, Yersinia pestis, by Alexandre Yersin, and went to Portugal to study and to help fight a plague epidemic at Porto in 1899.
9.
From 1908 to 1921, Guerin and Albert Calmette strived to produce less and less virulent strains of the bacillus, by transferring them to successive cultures.
10.
Notwithstanding, Albert Calmette was deeply shaken by the event, dying one year later, in Paris.
11.
Albert Calmette helped develop the amylolytic process which was used in industrial brewing.
12.
Albert Calmette was the brother of Gaston Calmette, the editor of Le Figaro who was shot and killed in 1914 by Henriette Caillaux after running a long press campaign against her husband.