Progress in Immunization (Popular Lecture)

Abstract

If one looks back at the status of immunization in, say, 1950, the progress achieved up to that time was already impressive. Table 1 shows the best information that I have been able to assemble, as to when vaccines for the diseases indicated were developed and put into clinical trial at least, if not into more general use. For comparison, I have separated them into the two major categories under which vaccines are usually considered — ‘live’ and ‘killed’ or ‘inactivated’. I have included in this list vaccines not only for human but also for veterinary use. I recognize my limitations in knowledge of the veterinary field, and I may well have committed some major omissions, but in my judgement several of the major advances in the development of veterinary immunizing agents were such landmarks that they could not possibly be omitted in the preparation of such a list as this. Notable examples are the use of inoculation for rinderpest as far back as the eighteenth century, and the development of the first known killed bacterial vaccine by Smith and Salmon in the 1880’s.