Identifying the Germ.

Developing the Antitoxin.

Prevention, Not Cure.

Tuberculosis.

Skin Test.

Mortality Rates.

Vaccine.

Calmette and Guerin.

BCG.

U.S. Response.

The vaccine was controversial in the United States because it used specially bred live bacteria, and it conflicted with the widely used skin test as developed by Koch. The skin test was designed to identify carriers of the disease for treatment, but anyone vaccinated showed a positive skin test even when not infected. Nevertheless, the vaccine was eventually accepted worldwide by the 1950s, and tuberculosis was finally reduced to a disease that could be prevented, or identified and treated.

Sources:

Barbara Bates, Bargaining for Life: A Social History of Tuberculosis, 1876-1938 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992);

George F. Dick and Gladys H. Dick, "The Etiology of Scarlet Fever," Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), 82 (26 January 1924): 301-302;

Dick and Dick, "Scarlet Fever...