A History of Immunology

Book excerpt: In this innovative, short, new textbook, Rod Langman offers a conceptual framework within which students can understand the evolution of the immune system. Evolutionary selection for resistance to infectious disease is shown to be the driving force that has shaped the immune system into a remarkably effective and efficient system of defense. In the midst of the current information explosion in immunological science, when many students are under the impression that the immune system is almost too complex to understand as a whole, The Immune System can be used alone as a text for an introductory course or used in conjunction with any of the several descriptive texts already on the market.