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SAN ANTONIO
MEDICINE

Student Research conducted by Omar A. Caballero, MS, OMS-II and
Travis B. Fenlon, OMS-II,
Mentored by Rebecca L. Sanchez, PhD

Several years into the Peloponnesian War, Before those questions were either answered retroactively answer the questions of the ori-
one quarter of the Athenian population ex- or even fully understood, the advent of vario- gin of immunity. Emil von Behring won the
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pired independent of a single Spartan blade. lation was upon us. Long since removed from first Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in
The beginning of the conflict that would ren- the intuition of immunity, now came the 1901 for his work on serum therapy, whereby
der the once omnipotent city-state of Athens shared eureka moment of cross-immunity in he demonstrated that endogenous antibodies
indistinguishable from that of Sparta was the late 18th century: English farmer Ben- could neutralize infectious agents, drawing a
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characterized by a rapidly spreading and jamin Jetsy and physician Edward Jenner in- stark contrast between Jenner and Pasteur in
deadly pustular rash. Athenian historian, dependently noted that milkmaids seemed to that immunity was not directly transferred
Thucydides, writing of this plague made note be unaffected by the smallpox running ram- from infectious particles themselves. Von
that those who had been afflicted and survived pant around them à la 5th century BC Behring’s work on antibodies would be fur-
“had now no fear for themselves; for the same Athens. Jenner’s work in conferring immu- thered by the discovery of specific receptor-
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man was never attacked twice—never at least nity to the Variola virus from cowpox pustules ligand binding by Paul Ehrlich, and the
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fatally.” Thus, a fertile soil for the field of im- proved sufficient to kickstart a movement that structure of the antibody itself by Gerald Edel-
munology was laid down: a facet of human swept the Western world—the first vaccine man and Rodney Porter, garnering them the
disease was the potential for immunity. was born. Enter the 19th century work of Nobel Prize in 1972.
Further investigations into this phenome- Louis Pasteur, and the composition of a vac- Coinciding with a greater understanding of
non of immunity were limited by etiological cine could not only be more than mere “cow the mechanism through which vaccines work,
theories of disease. Was disease theurgic and substance,” but also now did not necessitate as well as their efficacy, came sweeping meas-
immunity merely a reward for righteous be- even a mild illness upon administration. ures to ensure the population at large were
havior? Was disease humoral and immunity Through Pasteur, the vaccination possibilities protected against now-preventable diseases.
only afforded to those with the correct com- for which infectious agents to provide immu- General Washington saw to it that his Conti-
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position of the four bodily humors? Was dis- nity to, and how to go about creating such vac- nental Army was vaccinated against smallpox,
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ease iatrophysical and immunity possible only cines, seemed limitless. while President Thomas Jefferson sought pub-
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through proper bodily mechanics? Was dis- Now that so much of the groundwork of lic health vaccination initiatives. The
ease iatrochemical and immunity only pos- vaccinology had been laid down, the 20th cen- Supreme Court of the United States put forth
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sessed by those with “balsamic blood”? tury finally provided an opportunity to landmark decisions in Jacobson v. Massachu-

32 SAN ANTONIO MEDICINE • June 2021