BCG vaccine fine powder. Sometimes the powder is sealed with vacuum in a glass ampoule. Such a glass ampoule has to be opened slowly to prevent the airflow from blowing out the powder. Then the powder has to be diluted with saline water before injecting. The history of BCG is tied to that of smallpox. Jean Antoine Villemin first recognized bovine tuberculosis in 1854 and transmitted it, and Robert Koch first distinguished "Mycobacterium bovis" from "Mycobacterium tuberculosis". Following the success of vaccination in preventing smallpox, established during the 18th century, scientists thought to find a corollary in tuberculosis by drawing a parallel
Inoculation to Voltaire (1742), the Turks derived their use of inoculation to neighbouring Circassia. Voltaire does not speculate on where the Circassians derived their technique from, though he reports that the Chinese have practiced it "these hundred years". The Turkish practice was presented to the Royal Society in 1714 and 1716, when the physicians Emanuel Timoni and Giacomo Pylarini independently sent letters from Constantinople. Variolation is documented in India from the eighteenth century, thanks to the 1767 account by J. Z. Holwell. Holwell's extensive 1767 description included the following, that points to the connection between disease and "multitudes of imperceptible animalculae