History of immunology in modern era

John Fewster (1738-1824), a surgeon in Gloucestershire, England observed that a person who had been naturally exposed to cowpox, a viral disease of cattle related to smallpox, did not exhibit the normal mild case from smallpox when variolated.

He presented his observation to London Mdical Society in 1765 but never investigated further.

In 1798, Edward Jenner (1749-1823) inoculated a young man by named James Phipps with material obtained from a cowpox lesion. The results were conclusive but were met with great resistance by the Church.

It is the first demonstration of vaccination (smallpox vaccination). Jenner was a physician who practiced in the rural English countryside. As a country doctor, he was familiar with the ancient and unsafe technique of variolation – the administration of biological matter from smallpox sufferers to create immunity among those who survive the procedure.

One of which was that milkmaids who had caught cowpox never became infected with the more serious smallpox. Jenner suspected there to be a connection between the fact that milkmaids were commonly known to get cowpox, but not smallpox. That’s why he decided to try this theory by pacing the scab from a cowpox lesion into a cut made in arm of a young man James Phipps.

Élie Metchnikoff

Modern immunology begins with the research of Metchnikoff (1845-1916), who discovered the phenomenon of phagocytosis in starfish and extrapolated it to macrophages in humans as cells that engulf infections agents; this was the beginning of cellular immunology.

In 1840 the first modern proposal of the germ theory of disease was proposed Jakob Henle. He was a German physician, pathologist and anatomist. He is credited with the discovery of the loop of Henle in the kidney. Paul Ehrlich investigated the formation of antibodies recognized later as protein that destroyed infectious agents.

Ehrlich predicted autoimmunity calling it “horror autotoxicus”. He is the one coined the term of “chemotherapy”.

Louis Pasteur played a pivotal role in the evolution of the science. While Pasteur's work at the Pasteur Institute in Paris was concerned with bacterial infectious disease, he was most concerned with the prevention of diseases that bacteria caused and how the human body was changed subsequent to infection so as to resist further insults. Louis Pasteur became the first experimental immunologist.

Around 1960, it was appreciated that lymphocytes are the cells that mediate the immune reactions and experimentation moved for the first time from in vivo to in vitro, which allowed one to manipulate and investigate an immune reaction of cell population. Kendall A. Smith in 1983 discovered of the first interleukins 1 and 2.
History of immunology in modern era