Tumor Immunology: Basics of a Host-Specific Tumor Defense

Abstract

Organ transplants succeed only with art and trickery: to perfect technique by the surgeon must be added outwitting of the host’s defense mechanisms. But these are old problems. Van Helmont, a Flemish physician of the seventeenth century, reported:

A certain resident of Brussels had lost his nose in a battle and went to the famous surgeon Tagliacozzus, who lived in Bologna, with the request to supply him with a new nose. Since he was afraid of having a cut in his own arm, he hired a porter, out of whose arm — after a financial agreement had been reached — a new nose was formed. About 13 months after he had returned home, the transplanted nose suddenly became cold, decayed, and fell off within a few days. His friends, who were interested in an explanation of the reason for this misfortune, found out that the porter had passed on at just the same time that the nose became cold and foul. There are still reputable people in Brussels who were eye witnesses to this story.