Mycobacteriosis and Tuberculosis: Laboratory Diagnosis

Tuberculosis is one of the most important infectious diseases that has claimed its victims throughout much of known human history. With Koch's discovery of the tubercle bacillus as the etiologic agent of the disease, his sanitary and hygienic measures, which were based on his discovery and the development of a vaccine against tuberculosis by Albert Calmette and Camille Guérin in 1921, an attenuated Mycobacterium bovis strain, bacilli Calmette-Guérin (BCG), and the discovery of the first antibiotic against tuberculosis, streptomycin by Selman Waksman in 1943, soon led to the opinion that appropriate control measures had become available for tuberculosis and it had been assumed that the disease could ultimately be eradicated