To the Editor: I read with interest the article by Grange and colleagues suggesting that vaccination with BCG vaccine or past severe infections may help protect against the development of melanoma.1

They do not mention the work of Coley. Coley was a surgeon at the Hospital for the Ruptured and Crippled in New York, who, after observing the regression of tumours in patients who developed erysipelas involving the tumour site, reported in 1891 in the Annals of Surgery,2 and again in 1893 in the American Journal of the Medical Sciences,3 that injecting Streptococcus pyogenes from erysipelas isolates into the patient’s tumour induced regression.

Thus the relationship between neoplasia and bacterial infection has been recognised for 118 years.

Coley is considered the father of cancer vaccines.