ABSTRACT
Conflicting views of the history of immunology have been offered. Some commentators have emphasized its modest beginnings as a spin-off from late nineteenth century micr~biology.~ Others have shown that while drawing strength from cognate sciences, immunology has impressively contributed to them.3 The late Niels Jerne has recalled its continuous "private line to medicine," while contemporary immunologists try to cut off immunology from its applications, for example vaccination. Most explanatory accounts of the history of immunology4 however propose the following phases: 1. a preliminary period mapping the field of immunity and constructing the first
data as 'facts.' This period was marked by the shared Nobel Prize awarded in 1908 to the discoverers of the cellular and humoral components of immunity, the German Paul Ehrlich (1840-1915) in Frankfurt and the Russian-born Elie Metchnikoff (1845-1916) in Paris;
2. a phase of generalization of immunological phenomena with the demonstration by Landsteiner that almost any molecule, if appropriately used, could be antigenic and trigger an immune response;
3. after an explosion of studies of cellular immunity in the 1950s, all components, humoral and cellular were united into a vast system, called the immune system,
taking place in the body beside the other better known apparatuses such as the nervous or the endocrine systems.
