French physician who proved tuberculosis to be an infectious disease, transmitted by a specific m…

French physician who proved tuberculosis to be an infectious disease, transmitted by a specific microorganism from humans and cows to rabbits.

As an army doctor he observed that healthy young men from the country developed tuberculosis while living in the close quarters of the barracks.

He was aware that glanders, a similar disease in horses, was transmitted by inoculation. So he inoculated a rabbit with tuberculous material from a deceased human patient, tuberculous lesions were found in the rabbit three months later.

Before Villemin, many scientists believed that TB was hereditary. In fact, some stubbornly held on to this belief even after Villemin published his results (1867), until the agent Mycobacterium tuberculosis was identified by Robert Koch (1882).

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