ABSTRACT
The historical development of autoimmunity has been presented in the past in widely scattered notes in the medical literature. In an attempt to assimilate an account of the metamorphosis of this fascinating chapter in the history of immunology, we present the following major advances in autoimmunity and their discoverers, who are no less fascinating than the subject itself. It should be pointed out that a comprehensive or exhaustive review of the literature of autoimmunity was not our intention. By contrast, we only outline the milestones in the development of autoimmunity, which has significance not only for selected disease mechanisms but also for many features of normal immune reactivity and immunoregulation.
