Immunity in infective diseases

Description

"Immunity in infective diseases" by Elie Metchnikoff is a scientific treatise written in the early 20th century. It advances a primarily cellular (phagocytic) explanation for resistance to infection while engaging with humoral concepts, and it distinguishes natural from acquired, and antimicrobial from antitoxic, immunity. The work ranges from protozoa and plants to higher animals to build a unified view of how organisms resist microbes and their toxins, with clear implications for vaccination and medical practice. The opening of the treatise presents the translator’s aim for fidelity, the author’s purpose to synthesize decades of research, and his intent to clarify misunderstandings about the phagocytic theory. The introduction explains why immunity matters in medicine and theory, reviews how diverse parasites and their toxins cause disease, and argues that host predisposition and carrier states mean infection depends on both external agents and internal defenses. It then defines natural versus acquired immunity and separates immunity to microbes from immunity to toxins. Early chapters survey unicellular immunity: protozoa digest microbes in acidic vacuoles, expel resistant forms, and use irritability and chemotaxis to avoid danger; amoebae possess a trypsin-like “amoebo-diastase”; microbes can adapt to animal sera or poisons by forming protective envelopes; and such reactions follow the Weber–Fechner law of irritability. The text then turns to plants, showing mobile Myxomycete plasmodia that adapt to hostile solutions and, in higher plants, fungal attack (e.g., Sclerotinia) countered by tougher cell walls and wound defenses like suberization and cicatrization. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Subjects

• Communicable diseases -- Immunological aspects
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