ABSTRACT
Treatment of cancer by immunization with vaccines dates from the beginning of the twentieth century at a time when immunologists were making huge gains in the control of infections, such as tetanus and diphtheria, by immunization with bacterial products. The vaccines employed were autologous or allogeneic tumor cells or extracts and as early as 1914 physicians were suggesting that the success of this approach was related to a small tumor burden and an increase in leukocyte counts in the patients (Vaughan, 1914). By 1929, however, Woglom (1929) was writing that resistance was “not connected with any neoplastic qualities of the graft” and that “while a selective cytolysin for the malignant cell may some day be found, the chances of its discovery are remote.”
