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The Nature of Antibodies¹

Evans Memorial, Massachusetts Memorial Hospitals, and Boston University School of Medicine

Abstract

Upon occasions like this there is only one person who is obliged to address the meeting. In partial compensation he is permitted to indulge rather freely in imaginative flights and, when he returns to earth, he is at least temporarily immune to the critical discussion that the unprotected voluntary speaker must be prepared to endure. It has been considered appropriate for him to review some subject of specialized interest to the gathering.

For these reasons I have ventured to speculate upon the nature of antibodies. This title is even more pretentious than it seems at first glance, because we can not even define antibody without using such a comprehensive term as antigen, and it is impossible to discuss either without continual reference to the intricate concepts of immunochemical specificity.

Footnotes

¹ Presidential address delivered before the American Association of Immunologists at its Twenty-fourth Annual Meeting, Chicago, March 24, 1937.