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A unique book. Although Pasteur`s seminal contributions are known, the background leading to these discoveries has been admirably recapitulated. How studies to help sort the problems of wine and beer industry led to the recognition of microorganisms as the causative factor, and to the denunciation of the then prevalent views on spontaneous generation. The inability of an aged culture of fowl cholera to cause disease in chicken was not dismissed as a mistake, but deduced to make two observations fundamental to development of vaccines, namely a method to attenuate the virulence of the microorganisms and the use of such organisms as vaccines.The vaccine for rabies was a landmark at a time when no electron microscope was available to visualize a virus. Also this was the first use of a vaccine for therapeutic purposes! Pasteur`s heritage, the Institute that he created and scientists who worked with him, and after him, at this institute were responsible for discovery of the bacillus causing plague (and also the way it spreads through fleas, an observation made by them while working in India), the realization that the symptoms caused by diphtheria were at a point distant than the infective bacilli and hence due to a toxin elaborated; the antisera for tetanus and diphtheria; BCG, the attenuated bovine tuberculosis bacillus for vaccination etc. Metchnikoff laid the basis of cellular immunity, Bordet discovered the complement system.Part I of the book provides historical insights on the development of Immunology in the period between the two world wars, the Pasteurian and the Grand Germanic School of Koch, Ehrlich, and von Behring, the controversies which spurred progress and led to the enrichment of this discipline. A chapter in Part II summarizes the current status of the vaccine, which have historically been the most cost effective agents for control of diseases and have helped eradicate small pox from the surface of the globe.Part III of the book has two thought provoking articles on the philosophical implications of the findings on Immune Mechanisms to other biological processes. For example learning is not an acquired process from outside. Instructive theories on antibody formation are disproved. Instead, it is selection and amplification that prevails. The book concludes with an enlightening chapter on perspectives in modern immunology. The immune system need not be conceived for the aggressive function of combating outside organisms. The recognition of self is fundamental to its working.
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Chemical;
Engineering;
