Darwinism and immunologyfrom Metchnikoff to Burnet

Publisher Summary This chapter examines the history of Darwinian influences on immunological thought during the formative years of the discipline. Physiologist's interest in the cellular and molecular mechanisms of function paid overt attention to evolutionary theory. Their references to evolution were in the main implicit, and made in the context of organs and systems rather than of mechanisms. Other biomedical sciences paid little attention to Darwinian precepts. Only in the field of pathology was the inheritance of such acquired characteristics as malformations viewed as a significant component of the evolutionary process, most notably by Rudolph Virchow, the father of cellular pathology. Darwin's notion of “the survival of the fittest” was expressed in terms of a Malthusian contest among individuals within a species, selection favoring those best able to compete. Metchnikoff was initially critical of the Malthusian basis of Darwin's theory, but his study of embryology and the evolution of the process of digestion convinced him of the importance of Darwinian concepts, so that when he first observed phagocytosis, he was quick to give it a Darwinian interpretation.