MICR 3230 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Monocyte, Macrophage, Multiple Sclerosis
16 Sep 2018
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Document Summary
The discipline of immunology grew out of the observation that individuals who had recovered from certain infectious diseases were thereafter protected from the disease. The latin term immunis, (cid:373)ea(cid:374)i(cid:374)g (cid:862)e(cid:454)e(cid:373)pt,(cid:863) is the source of the e(cid:374)glish word i(cid:373)(cid:373)u(cid:374)it(cid:455). Observations of immunity go back over 2000 years. Thucydides, a historian, wrote in 430 bc of a plague in athens where those who had recovered could safely nurse the currently ill. Chinese and turks in the fifteenth century attempted to induce immunity against smallpox: The first recorded attempt to deliberately induce immunity. The dried crust derived from smallpox pustules either inhaled or inserted into small cuts in the skin (a technique called variolation) Observed that milkmaids who had contracted the mild disease cowpox (zoonotic disease) were subsequently immune to the much more severe smallpox. Reasoned that introducing fluid from a cowpox pustule into people might protect them from smallpox.
