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Immunity is an extensive topic, worthy of an encyclopedia of its own.

Here we cannot summarize the field in detail, but will identify key
concepts. These concepts include (1) the difference between innate
and acquired immunity and how they relate to each other; (2) the
notions of specificity and immune memory; (3) the sometimes
antagonistic concepts of self and danger; and (4) the mutually defined
ideas of an antigen and its receptor. This article will arm the
microbiologist not with a storehouse of information, the classic goal of
an encyclopedia, but with a fundament of understanding with which to
read the larger literature of immunity.
The word ‘immunity’ derives from the Latin immunitas, the legal status
of Roman city-states granted immunity from paying tributes to Rome
or to individuals freed from municipal duties; the root munis referring
to change and (ex)changeable goods. This is the direct origin of the
legal meaning of ‘immunity from prosecution’, but , in the first century,
Lucan (De Bello Civile) had already used the word metaphorically to
describe the Psylli of North Africa as immune to the bites of venomous
snakes. Biological immunity can refer to constitutive physical innate
mechanisms, such as the physical protection afforded against
infection by skin, the activity of natural killer (NK) cells against virus-
infected cells, or the natural resistance of mice to diphtheria toxin
because of the absence of a receptor for that toxin. Immunity can also
be innate but inducible, as in the antiviral state induced by exposure to
double-stranded RNA (dsRNA). Finally, immunity to specific microbes
can be acquired during the lifetime of the individual by infection or
vaccination.
The origins of immunology as a science are lost in antiquity but have
always been fundamentally connected with microbiology. It was
certainly known before the beginning of the Common Era that
survivors of certain plagues (perhaps smallpox) were immune to its
recurrence. Observations such as these were rendered uncertain by
imprecise diagnoses of the illness, but advanced sufficiently so that by
the end of the first millennium, Common Era, Chinese and Hindu
healers were aware of the efficacy of the homeopathic practice of
insufflation, in which powdered scabs of the afflicted were blown
through straws into the lungs of healthy individuals. This observation
drew these ancient doctors to a fundamental insight on acquired
immunity – some property of the diseased could induce long-standing
and specific protection in naive individuals. Centuries of observations
and reconceptualizations about the specificity of this protection led to
Fracastoro’s fourteenth century germ theory of infectious disease,
which held that infectious diseases were caused by disease-specific
agents. This core concept was dealt a minor blow in the late 1700s,
when Jenner found that vaccination with cowpox protected against the
different though closely related disease smallpox. However, the
successes of both variolation and vaccination spurred the deliberate
experiments of Pasteur in the following century to develop attenuated
vaccines and a modern version of the Specific Germ Theory of
infectious disease. The modern concepts of acquired immunity
maintain that induced protection is specific for each infectious agent,
but recognize specificity at the level of molecules rather than
microbes, which allows cross-reactivity and self-reactivity
(autoimmunity).