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RALPH J. WEDGWOOD, M.D.

AMA Arch Intern Med. 1959;104(3):497-505.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

The word "immune" derives from the Romans, who used it to describe those persons declared exempt from taxation and other obligations to the state. The meaning was later applied to the exemption and protection due to the early Christian church and its officers, as in "papal immunity" or the "immunity from arrest" found in the sanctuary of the church. The understanding of the word changed from the concept of "exemption" to the connotation "rendered safe," and usage implied that such protection was innate.

"Immune" was thus the word applied to that state in which animals were protected or rendered safe from an infectious agent, either by prior infection or by experience. The substances which appeared in the serum under these circumstances were logically called "immune bodies"; they later became "antibodies," and again, logically, immunity —the state of refractoriness to infection— was equated directly by many persons with such circulating antibodies.* . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
Cleveland

Departments of Pediatrics and Preventive Medicine, Western Reserve University School of Medicine.

Footnotes
Submitted for publication April 7, 1959.

This work was conducted in part under the auspices of the Commission on Acute Respiratory Diseases of the Armed Forces Epidemiological Board and supported in part by the Office of the Surgeon General, Department of the Army, Washington, D. C.

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