Teaching Your Body to Fight the Enemy Within

n early May, 1891, William Coley, a New York surgeon, had before him an interesting case. The patient, a 35-year-old Italian man, had sarcoma tumors in his neck and tonsils, and was slowly starving to death as a result of the chicken-egg-sized mass protruding from his right tonsil into his throat. He could not eat solid food; liquids were not a safe bet either, as he sometimes aspirated them up his nose. A surgeon in Rome had operated