6 - The Practical Application of Immunology to Medicine

Abstract

The birth of modern immunology can be dated to the discoveries of Pasteur relating to the artificial induction of immunity to anthrax and chicken cholera about 1881. This chapter discusses the development of the science through its great triumphs in practical medicine, rabies vaccination and the serum therapy of diphtheria, and describes the history of the underlying mechanisms of immunity taking the story down to about the middle of the first decade of the 20th century. For all the great interest of the academic study of the interaction of antigen and antibodies, the driving force behind the whole effort was the severely practical aim of preventing and treating human infectious disease. The chapter also discusses the progress made in this direction, apart from the great successes of rabies prophylaxis and diphtheria therapy, during the quarter of a century following Pasteur's demonstration of the possibility of immunization as a means of combating infectious disease. Pasteur's work on anthrax could not immediately be applied to human disease for, by 1881, none of the causative organisms of any of the major human bacterial diseases had been isolated. However, during the next five or six years, a number of human bacterial pathogens, the causative organisms of important epidemic diseases, were discovered.