Medicine: Weighing a Complement

For the intricate processes of giving people immunity against disease, instead of waiting to cure them after they have been stricken (gamma globulin and vaccines for polio are the latest examples), medical science has a relatively new name: immunochemistry. Last week judges for the Lasker Awards recognized its importance by picking as one of 1953's winners Dr. Michael Heidelberger, 65, of New York City, for "decisive contributions to mankind in developing a new subscience. the precise measuring tool of immunochemistry."

Immunization itself is not new, but more than a century after Edward Jenner discovered vaccination, immunology was still largely, according to Lasker...