Intolerant Bodies
A Short History of Autoimmunity
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- $25.99
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- $25.99
Publisher Description
Autoimmune diseases, which affect 5 to 10 percent of the population, are as unpredictable in their course as they are paradoxical in their cause. They produce persistent suffering as they follow a drawn-out, often lifelong, pattern of remission and recurrence. Multiple sclerosis, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and type 1 diabetes—the diseases considered in this book—are but a handful of the conditions that can develop when the immune system goes awry.
Intolerant Bodies is a unique collaboration between Ian Mackay, one of the prominent founders of clinical immunology, and Warwick Anderson, a leading historian of twentieth-century biomedical science. The authors narrate the changing scientific understanding of the cause of autoimmunity and explore the significance of having a disease in which one’s body turns on itself. The book unfolds as a biography of a relatively new concept of pathogenesis, one that was accepted only in the 1950s.
In their description of the onset, symptoms, and course of autoimmune diseases, Anderson and Mackay quote from the writings of Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Joseph Heller, Flannery O’Connor, and other famous people who commented on or grappled with autoimmune disease. The authors also assess the work of the dedicated researchers and physicians who have struggled to understand the mysteries of autoimmunity. Connecting laboratory research, clinical medicine, social theory, and lived experience, Intolerant Bodies reveals how doctors and patients have come to terms, often reluctantly, with this novel and puzzling mechanism of disease causation.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Anderson, of the University of Sydney, and Mackay, of Australia's Monash University, consider autoimmune diseases, focusing on multiple sclerosis, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and type 1 diabetes in a fast-paced, jam-packed survey of medical history, clinical data, and patient accounts. The examination reaches back to the early 20th century and extends to mid-century, when biology, research, and clinical understanding coalesced around the vexing issue of the body's immune response. By 1961, the authors note, microbiologist F. Macfarlane Burnet wrote of the "acute interest" in disease that results "from a misdirected immunologic attack on some of the body's own components." Patients had no name for their frightening, chronic ailments, yet their voices were soon heard. Writer Flannery O'Connor observed of her lupus, "it comes and goes, when it comes I retire and when it goes, I venture forth," and one woman described her multiple sclerosis as "sporadically... in its infestations, a disgusting disease." Today, despite greater understanding, O'Connor would find little changed in the management of lupus, the authors say. Similar troubles persist in dealing with MS and diabetes. Anderson and Mackay's engaging survey is a studious examination of autoimmune diseases, and a humble admission that their cures remains stubbornly illusive.
