Léon Charles Albert Calmette (July 12, 1863 – October 29, 1933) was a French physician, bacteriologist and immunologist, and an important officer of the Pasteur Institute. He discovered the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin, an attenuated form of Mycobacterium used in the BCG vaccine against tuberculosis. He also developed the first antivenin for snake venom, the Calmette's serum.
Calmette was born in Nice, France. He wanted to serve in the Navy and be a ...
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Léon Charles Albert Calmette (July 12, 1863 – October 29, 1933) was a French physician, bacteriologist and immunologist, and an important officer of the Pasteur Institute. He discovered the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin, an attenuated form of Mycobacterium used in the BCG vaccine against tuberculosis. He also developed the first antivenin for snake venom, the Calmette's serum.
Calmette was born in Nice, France. He wanted to serve in the Navy and be a physician, so in 1881 he joined the School of Naval Physicians at Brest. He started to serve in 1883 in the Naval Medical Corps in Hong Kong, where he studied malaria and got his doctoral degree in 1886 on this subject. He was then assigned to Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, where he arrived in 1887. After, he served in West Africa, in Gabon and French Congo, where he researched malaria, sleeping sickness and pellagra.
Upon his return to France in 1890, Calmette met Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) and Emile Roux (1853-1933), who was his professor in a...
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