At war within : the double-edged sword of immunity / William R. Clark.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Clark, William R., 1938- author.

Series:

Oxford scholarship online.

Oxford scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Immune system--Popular works.

Immune system.

Immunologic diseases--Popular works.

Immunologic diseases.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (289 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New York : Oxford University Press, 2023.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In the seventeenth century, smallpox reigned as the world's worst killer. Luck, more than anything else, decided who would live and who would die. That is, until Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, an English aristocrat, moved to Constantinople and noticed the Turkish practice of ""ingrafting"" or inoculation, which, she wrote, made ""the small- pox...entirely harmless."" Convinced by what she witnessed, she allowed her six-year-old son to be ingrafted, and the treatment was a complete success--the young Montagu enjoyed lifelong immunity from smallpox.

Contents:

Contents; Introduction; 1 Overture to a Science Unborn: Smallpox and the Origins of Immunology; 2 The Anatomy of an Immune Response; 3 Living in the Bubble: Primary Immune Deficiency Diseases; 4 Hypersensitivity and Allergy; 5 Horror Autotoxicus: The Immunology of Self-Destruction; 6 When the Wall Comes Tumbling Down: AIDS; 7 Organ Transplantation: Exploring the Boundary Between Technology and Ethics; 8 Minding the Immune System's Business: The Dialogue Between the Brain and the Immune System; Appendix: Diversity, Tolerance, and Memory: The Politically Correct Immune System; Bibliography; Index

Notes:

Previously issued in print: 1995.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 267-269) and index.

Derived record based on print version record and publisher information.

ISBN:

0-19-770025-X

1-280-96563-0

9786610965632

0-19-802530-0

OCLC:

435824030