Landmarks in Immunology

This chapter reviews immunology and the immunologic milieu in which transplantation and transplantation immunology flourished during the 20th century. Louis Pasteur, a giant of early bacteriology and immunotherapy, is often described as the father of immunology, but vaccination was practiced long before his lifetime—at a time when nothing was known of disease-causing organisms. Ehrlich also contributed to the development of the protective role of antitoxins. He induced immunity to the toxins ricin and abrin in mice by feeding them with minute amounts of the toxins incorporated in their diet, and he described that immunity appeared suddenly on day six and persisted for the duration of his observations. The blood of the immune animals possessed antitoxins that specifically neutralized the toxin and that could be transferred passively to normal animals. The passively transferred antibodies persisted in the recipients for “a relatively long time,” though the protective effect had more or less disappeared by the 35th day. Because of his observation, Ehrlich concluded that other toxins that could incite the production of antibodies were chemically quite distinct. The development of immunology during the course of over a century has been quite breathtaking and, with the exception of a relatively quiet period in the 1920s and 1930s, it has sustained the intellectual excitement of its formative years in the past two decades of the 19th century.