A History of Modern Immunology

A History of Modern Immunology

Author: Zoltan A. Nagy

Publisher: Academic Press

Published: 2013-10-11

Total Pages: 357

ISBN-13: 0124201083

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A History of Modern Immunology: A Path Toward Understanding describes, analyzes, and conceptualizes several seminal events and discoveries in immunology in the last third of the 20th century, the era when most questions about the biology of the immune system were raised and also found their answers. Written by an eyewitness to this history, the book gives insight into personal aspects of the important figures in the discipline, and its data driven emphasis on understanding will benefit both young and experienced scientists. This book provides a concise introduction to topics including immunological specificity, antibody diversity, monoclonal antibodies, major histocompatibility complex, antigen presentation, T cell biology, immunological tolerance, and autoimmune disease. This broad background of the discipline of immunology is a valuable companion for students of immunology, research and clinical immunologists, and research managers in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. - Contains the history of major breakthroughs in immunology featured with authenticity and insider details - Gives an insight into personal aspects of the players in the history of immunology - Enables the reader to recognize and select data of heuristic value which elucidate important facets of the immune system - Provides good examples and guidelines for the recognition and selection of what is important for the exploration of the immune system - Gives clear separation of descriptive and interpretive parts, allowing the reader to distinguish between facts and analysis provided by the author


A History of Immunology

A History of Immunology

Author: Arthur M. Silverstein

Publisher: Elsevier

Published: 2012-12-02

Total Pages: 445

ISBN-13: 0080925839

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This is a professional-level intellectual history of the development of immunology from about 1720 to about 1970. Beginning with the work and insights of the early immunologists in the 18th century, Silverstein traces the development of the major ideas which have formed immunology down to the maturation of the discipline in the decade following the Second World War. Emphasis is placed on the philosophic and sociologic climate of the scientific milieu in which immunology has developed, providing a background to the broad culture of the discipline. - A professional-level intellectual history of the development of immunology from about 1720 to 1970, with emphasis placed on the social climate of the scientific milieu in which modern immunology evolved - Written by an author very well known both as a historian of medical science and for his substantial research contributions to the immunopathology of the eye - The only complete history of immunology available


A History of Medical Bacteriology and Immunology

A History of Medical Bacteriology and Immunology

Author: W. D. Foster

Publisher: Butterworth-Heinemann

Published: 2014-05-20

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 1483162451

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A History of Medical Bacteriology and Immunology provides the account of the history of bacteriology from the year 1900 to 1938. This book presents details about the discovery of the important pathogenic bacteria of man, of how they were shown to be causally related to disease, and of the use of these discoveries in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease. Other topics discussed include the development of the germ theory of infectious diseases; contribution of Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch to medical bacteriology; and discovery of the more important human pathogenic bacteria. This text also discusses the scientific basis and practical application of immunology to medicine; main developments in bacteriology during the early 20th century; and chemotherapy of bacterial disease. This medically oriented text is beneficial for students and individuals conducting study on medical bacteriology and immunology.


Immunity

Immunity

Author: Luba Vikhanski

Publisher: Chicago Review Press

Published: 2016-04-01

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 1613731132

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Around Christmas of 1882, while peering through a microscope at starfish larvae in which he had inserted tiny thorns, Russian zoologist Elie Metchnikoff had a brilliant insight: what if the mobile cells he saw gathering around the thorns were nothing but a healing force in action? Metchnikoff's daring theory of immunity—that voracious cells he called phagocytes formed the first line of defense against invading bacteria—would eventually earn the scientist a Nobel Prize, shared with his archrival, as well as the unofficial moniker "Father of Natural Immunity." But first he had to win over skeptics, especially those who called his theory "an oriental fairy tale." Using previously inaccessible archival materials, author Luba Vikhanski chronicles Metchnikoff's remarkable life and discoveries in the first moder n biography of this hero of medicine. Metchnikoff was a towering figure in the scientific community of the early twentieth century, a tireless humanitarian who, while working at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, also strived to curb the spread of cholera, syphilis, and other deadly diseases. In his later years, he startled the world with controversial theories on longevity, launching a global craze for yogurt, and pioneered research into gut microbes and aging. Though Metchnikoff was largely forgotten for nearly a hundred years, Vikhanski documents a remarkable revival of interest in his ideas on immunity and on the gut flora in the science of the twenty-first century.


Metchnikoff and the Origins of Immunology

Metchnikoff and the Origins of Immunology

Author: Alfred I. Tauber

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1991-07-25

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 019534510X

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This fascinating intellectual history is the first critical study of the work of Elie Metchnikoff, the founding father of modern immunology. Metchnikoff authored and championed the theory that phagocytic cells actively defend the host body against pathogens and diseased cells. His program developed from comparative embryological studies that sought to establish genealogical relations between species at the dawn of the Darwinian revolution. In this scientific biography, Tauber and Chernyak explore ore Metchnikoff's development as an embryologist, showing how it prepared him to propose his theory of host-pathogen interaction. They discuss the profound impact of Darwin's theory of evolution on Metchnikoff's progress, and the influence of 19th century debates on vitalism, teleology, and mechanism. As a case study of scientific discovery, this work offers lucid insight into the process of creative science and its dependence on cultural and philosophic sources. Immunologists and historians of science and medicine will find it an absorbing and accessible account of a remarkable individual.


Species and Specificity

Species and Specificity

Author: Pauline M. H. Mazumdar

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2002-07-18

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 9780521525237

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An account of scientific disputes over the core problems of research and practice in immunology.


The Age of Immunology

The Age of Immunology

Author: A. David Napier

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2010-12-15

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 0226568148

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In this fascinating and inventive work, A. David Napier argues that the central assumption of immunology—that we survive through the recognition and elimination of non-self—has become a defining concept of the modern age. Tracing this immunological understanding of self and other through an incredibly diverse array of venues, from medical research to legal and military strategies and the electronic revolution, Napier shows how this defensive way of looking at the world not only destroys diversity but also eliminates the possibility of truly engaging difference, thereby impoverishing our culture and foreclosing tremendous opportunities for personal growth. To illustrate these destructive consequences, Napier likens the current craze for embracing diversity and the use of politically correct speech to a cultural potluck to which we each bring different dishes, but at which no one can eat unless they abide by the same rules. Similarly, loaning money to developing nations serves as a tool both to make the peoples in those nations more like us and to maintain them in the nonthreatening status of distant dependents. To break free of the resulting downward spiral of homogenization and self-focus, Napier suggests that we instead adopt a new defining concept based on embryology, in which development and self-growth take place through a process of incorporation and transformation. In this effort he suggests that we have much to learn from non-Western peoples, such as the Balinese, whose ritual practices require them to take on the considerable risk of injecting into their selves the potential dangers of otherness—and in so doing ultimately strengthen themselves as well as their society. The Age of Immunology, with its combination of philosophy, history, and cultural inquiry, will be seen as a manifesto for a new age and a new way of thinking about the world and our place in it.


A Body Worth Defending

A Body Worth Defending

Author: Ed Cohen

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2009-10-16

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 0822391112

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Biological immunity as we know it does not exist until the late nineteenth century. Nor does the premise that organisms defend themselves at the cellular or molecular levels. For nearly two thousand years “immunity,” a legal concept invented in ancient Rome, serves almost exclusively political and juridical ends. “Self-defense” also originates in a juridico-political context; it emerges in the mid-seventeenth century, during the English Civil War, when Thomas Hobbes defines it as the first “natural right.” In the 1880s and 1890s, biomedicine fuses these two political precepts into one, creating a new vital function, “immunity-as-defense.” In A Body Worth Defending, Ed Cohen reveals the unacknowledged political, economic, and philosophical assumptions about the human body that biomedicine incorporates when it recruits immunity to safeguard the vulnerable living organism. Inspired by Michel Foucault’s writings about biopolitics and biopower, Cohen traces the migration of immunity from politics and law into the domains of medicine and science. Offering a genealogy of the concept, he illuminates a complex of thinking about modern bodies that percolates through European political, legal, philosophical, economic, governmental, scientific, and medical discourses from the mid-seventeenth century through the twentieth. He shows that by the late nineteenth century, “the body” literally incarnates modern notions of personhood. In this lively cultural rumination, Cohen argues that by embracing the idea of immunity-as-defense so exclusively, biomedicine naturalizes the individual as the privileged focus for identifying and treating illness, thereby devaluing or obscuring approaches to healing situated within communities or collectives.


The Beautiful Cure

The Beautiful Cure

Author: Daniel M. Davis

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2021-03-19

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 022637114X

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“A terrific book by a consummate storyteller and scientific expert considers the past and future of the body’s ability to fight disease and heal itself.” —Adam Rutherford, The Guardian The immune system holds the key to human health. In The Beautiful Cure, leading immunologist Daniel M. Davis describes how the scientific quest to understand how the immune system works—and how it is affected by stress, sleep, age, and our state of mind—is now unlocking a revolutionary new approach to medicine and well-being. The body’s ability to fight disease and heal itself is one of the great mysteries and marvels of nature. But in recent years, painstaking research has resulted in major advances in our grasp of this breathtakingly beautiful inner world: a vast and intricate network of specialist cells, regulatory proteins, and dedicated genes that are continually protecting our bodies. Far more powerful than any medicine ever invented, the immune system plays a crucial role in our daily lives. We have found ways to harness these natural defenses to create breakthrough drugs and so-called immunotherapies that help us fight cancer, diabetes, arthritis, and many age-related diseases, and we are starting to understand whether activities such as mindfulness might play a role in enhancing our physical resilience. Written by a researcher at the forefront of this adventure, The Beautiful Cure tells a dramatic story of scientific detective work and discovery, of puzzles solved and mysteries that linger, of lives sacrificed and saved. With expertise and eloquence, Davis introduces us to this revelatory new understanding of the human body and what it takes to be healthy. “Visceral.” —The Wall Street Journal “Illuminating.” —Publishers Weekly “Heroic.” —Science


A History of Transplantation Immunology

A History of Transplantation Immunology

Author: Leslie Brent

Publisher: Academic Press

Published: 1996-11-18

Total Pages: 506

ISBN-13: 008053399X

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Those entering the field of transplantation are frequently unaware of the topics historical roots and even of the background on which modern discoveries in tolerance, histocompabatibility antigens, and xenotransplantation are based. A History of Transplantation Immunology is an account, written by one of the founding fathers of the field, of how tissue and organ transplantation has become one of the most successful branches of late 20th century medicine. The book helps place the work of contemporary scientists into its proper context and makes fascinating reading for immunologists in all stages of their career. - Describes landmarks in immunology and places them in historical context - Beautifully written by one of the founding fathers of the field - Portrays the surprising history of events in a colorful and readable manner - Contains biographical sketches of some of the pioneers - Illustrates the development of key ideas in immunology--tolerance, graft rejection, and transplantation - Foreword by Ray Owen