ABSTRACT
In , the Nobel Prize winning Danish immunologist Niels Jerne (–) began his introduction of an expansive collection of papers on the origins of lymphocyte diversity at the Cold Spring Harbor Symposium on Quantitative Biology by reviewing what he termed ‘the common sense of immunology’, that is, the range of immunological ‘notions that have gained general acceptance’ by immunologists at any one time. After exploring discussions from a previous symposium on antibodies in that had vindicated the clonal selection theory proposed by Frank Macfarlane Burnet (– ), and then outlining the nature of current debates about lymphocyte structure and function, Jerne looked to the future. Recognizing the progress that had been made since immunology’s origins in the late nineteenth century, he highlighted the potential for basic immunological research to ‘lead to important medical advances’. In the process, he implied that the development of closer links between the immunological bench and the bedside had been, and would continue to be, made possible by the persistent clinical orientation of certain sub-disciplines within immunology:
Jerne’s evaluation of the distance that had separated many laboratory immunologists from their colleagues in the biological sciences and in the clinic during the first half of the twentieth century and his explicit attempts to bridge that gap are instructive. As Jerne’s reflections elsewhere demonstrate – and as many historians of immunology have pointed out – the s and s constituted a critical moment in the emergence of a ‘new immunology’.2 Not only were stronger links promoted between immunobiologists and immunochemists (or what Jerne referred to as cis-and trans-immunologists), but immunologists also became anxious to prioritize and publicize the biological
tenor and clinical significance of their research. Although Jerne acknowledged that immunochemical approaches had clearly elucidated many critical features of antibody structure, he suggested that by the s ‘the wrinkled features of immunology were definitely in need of a face-lifting’.3 Within this context, Jerne’s appropriation of allergy, serology and vaccination into the immunological fold served not merely to emphasize the clinical tradition within immunology; it also facilitated and endorsed a fundamental intellectual and political transformation in the discipline.
