Preface 



This little book is intended to introduce the reader to our present 

 knowledge of immunochemical specificity (a somewhat broader 

 topic than the specificity of antibodies and antigens) by a discussion 

 of some of the important modern advances in this field and an in- 

 troductory account of certain earlier work that has served as a 

 foundation for recent progress. Aimed at the nonspecialist as well 

 as the specialist, the treatment is on the whole more elementary than 

 that of my Fundamentals of luununology, but in some ways more 

 detailed and up to date. 



The material is based primarily on a series of lectures which I 

 had the privilege of giving in Moscow in the autumn of 1959. The 

 book is not, however, a mere retranslation of the Russian text, but a 

 thorough revision of the original English, with considerable additions. 



Certain traces of the lecture form in which the material was origi- 

 nally cast still remain. Some of these may be disadvantages, but 

 some of them perhaps may not be. The style of lectures can and, in 

 my opinion, should be somewhat more informal than that of a text- 

 book. The lecturer is also more or less expected to do certain 

 things (and not to do others). He is expected, for example, to 

 bring his audience up to date, even to the point of presenting some 

 material not yet to be found in the textbooks and in some cases not 

 yet published. He is expected, or at least allowed, to discuss cer- 

 tain aspects of his own work in more detail than might seem proper 

 elsewhere. At the same time he is not required to cover the field 



