The First Line of Defense: The Misunderstood Tonsils and the Century-Long Mistake of Removing Them

For most of the 20th century, if a child had a sore throat, the medical default was swift and brutal: surgically remove the tonsils. Treated as useless evolutionary leftovers, similar to the appendix, tonsils were extracted by the millions. We now know this routine surgery dismantled one of our body's most critical alarm systems.

The First Line of Defense corrects a century of anatomical arrogance. Far from being redundant tissue, the tonsils and adenoids are specialized lymphatic command ce...