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Immunity

Immunity is a biological state that allows the body to avoid infection or disease through sufficient biological defenses. The immune system has both specific and non-specific components - the specific components adapt to each new disease encountered to generate pathogen-specific immunity, while the non-specific components act as barriers or eliminators of a wide range of pathogens. Immunity can be acquired naturally through contact with a disease-causing agent, or artificially through deliberate actions like vaccination.

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Gautam Nagpal
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232 views5 pages

Immunity

Immunity is a biological state that allows the body to avoid infection or disease through sufficient biological defenses. The immune system has both specific and non-specific components - the specific components adapt to each new disease encountered to generate pathogen-specific immunity, while the non-specific components act as barriers or eliminators of a wide range of pathogens. Immunity can be acquired naturally through contact with a disease-causing agent, or artificially through deliberate actions like vaccination.

Uploaded by

Gautam Nagpal
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Immunity

Immunity is a biological term that describes a state of having sufficient biological defenses to
avoid infection, disease, or other unwanted biological invasion.

Immunity

Specific Components Non-Specific Components

The specific components of the The non-specific components act either


immune system adapt themselves to each as barriers or as eliminators of wide
new disease encountered and are able to range of pathogens irrespective of
generate pathogen-specific immunity. antigenic specificity.
Adaptive immunity

Naturally acquired immunity Artificially acquired immunity

It occurs through contact with a disease It develops only through deliberate actions
causing agent, when the contact was not such as vaccination
deliberate
History of theories of immunity

The concept of immunity has intrigued mankind for thousands of years. The prehistoric view of
disease was that it was caused by supernatural forces, and that illness was a form of theurgic
punishment for “bad deeds” or “evil thoughts” visited upon the soul by the gods or by one’s
enemies. In the 19th century, diseases were attributed to an alteration or imbalance in one of the
four humors (blood, phlegm, yellow bile or black bile). The miasma theory, which held that diseases
such as cholera or the Black Plague were caused by a miasma, a noxious form of “bad air”. If
someone were exposed to the miasma, they could get the disease.#######@@@@@@!!!!!****
!@#$%^&*()_)(*&^%$#@#$#@#$%$#@#$%^%$#@#$%^%$#@!@#$%^#@#$%^&*&^%$#!!!!
The modern word “immunity” derives from the Latin immunis, meaning exemption from military
service, tax payments or other public services. [3] The first written descriptions of the concept of
immunity may have been made by the Athenian Thucydides who, in 430 BC, described that when
the plague hit Athens “the sick and the dying were tended by the pitying care of those who had
recovered, because they knew the course of the disease and were themselves free from
apprehensions. For no one was ever attacked a second time, or not with a fatal result”.[3] The term
“immunes”, is also found in the epic poem “Pharsalia” written around 60 B.C. by the poet Marcus
Annaeus Lucanus to describe a North African tribe’s resistance to snake venom.[2]
The first clinical description of immunity which arose from a specific disease causing organism is
probably Kitab fi al-jadari wa-al-hasbah (A Treatise on Smallpox and Measles, translated 1848[4])
written by the Islamic physician Al-Razi in the 9th century. In the treatise, Al Razi describes the
clinical presentation of smallpox and measles and goes on to indicate that that exposure to these
specific agents confers lasting immunity (although he does not use this term). [2] However, it was
with Louis Pasteur’s Germ theory of disease that the fledgling science of immunology began to
explain how bacteria caused disease, and how, following infection, the human body gained the
ability to resist further insults.[3]

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