ABOVE: Although the Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine has never been routinely administered in the United States due to the country’s low incidence of tuberculosis, it is sometimes given to children who are regularly exposed to others with the disease. It was originally administered in an oral formulation, but researchers subsequently developed a version given as a shallow injection into the skin, shown here being administered by Reuben Erickson, the chief of the Division of Tuberculosis at Albany Hospital, in 1949.
CORNELL CAPA/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION VIA GETTY IMAGES
In the early 20th century, French bacteriologists Albert Calmette and Camille Guérin at the Pasteur Institute in Lille set out to develop a vaccine to protect against tuberculosis, a potentially severe lung infection that has been responsible for more human deaths than any other pathogen in history. It would take more than a decade of painstaking work before they had a TB vaccine ...
