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At War Within : the Double-edged Sword of Immunity by William R. Clark is a nonfiction available to read on EtoBox.

What is At War Within : the Double-edged Sword of Immunity about?

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. Lady Montagu's discovery would, however, remain a quiet one; it would be almost 150 years before inoculation (in the more modern form of vaccination) would become widely accepted while the medical community struggled to understand the way our bodies defend themselves against disease. William Clark's At War Within takes us on a fascinating tour through the immune system, examining the history of its discovery, the ways in which it protects us, and how it may bring its full force to bear at the wrong time or in the wrong place. Scientists have only gradually come to realize that this elegant defense system not only has the potential to help, as in

Who reads At War Within : the Double-edged Sword of Immunity?

Author

William R. Clark

Publisher

New York : Oxford University Press

Published

1995

Language

EN

ISBN

9781280965630

Category

nonfiction

Subjects

Medical, Science, History