I found Metchnikoff a delightful companion. He always had something new or of special interest to show to me at the laboratory—some microscopical preparation, the digestive process in Protozoa, the microbian parasite of a water-flea, a new method of dark ground illumination with high powers (Commandant’s method for film production), the newly discovered Treponema of syphilis, or the experimental inoculation of a disease under study. Sometimes I would lunch at his house, when, although he neither smoked nor took alcoholic drinks himself, he made a point of giving me first-rate claret and a good cigar. It was about the year 1900 that he arranged for the preparation of a pure “sour milk” made by the use of a special lactic ferment (selected and cultivated by himself), and this he took regularly. I found it a most agreeable food, and for several years made it an article of my own diet. He was very careful about the possible contamination of uncooked food by bacteria and the eggs of parasitic worms, and in consequence had “rolls” sent to him from the bakers each in its separate paper bag, whilst he would never eat uncooked salads or fruit which could not be rendered safe by “peeling.” This was not an excess of caution, but resulted from his characteristic determination to carry out in practice the directions given by definite scientific knowledge, and to make the attempt to lead so far as possible a life free from disease. Often when I arrived in Paris he would invite me to lunch at one of the leading cafés, and though he ate very simple food himself took keen pleasure in ordering the best for me and thoroughly enjoyed the change of scene and the amenities of a first-rate restaurant. During one of his visits to London, I remember that he was invited, and I with him, on two or three occasions, by leading London physicians to dinner-parties. He was greatly shocked at the amount of strong wine which his hosts and fellow-guests consumed, and assured me that in Paris it would be injurious to the reputation of a physician were he not to set an example of either abstinence or great moderation.
Metchnikoff was not only exceedingly gentle and courteous in his treatment of servants and employés, but he and his wife contrived on a very small income to help in a most substantial way poor neighbours and those who had met with misfortune whether they were of French or Russian nationality. They had many friends in the world of science and art, real workers and thinkers, including those who had not and those who had “arrived.” With them I met and spent a long and interesting day with Rodin the sculptor and the son of Léon Tolstoï, who was working in a Paris studio. Among the pleasures which I have derived from the Life are the accounts of places such as Naples and Messina, where I stayed in order to study the embryology of marine animals as Metchnikoff did; and also the appearance in these pages from time to time of old friends such as Nikolas Kleinenberg, whom Metchnikoff met at Messina in 1883. I had formed an intimate acquaintance with Kleinenberg at Jena in 1871, when he was working at his classical monograph on Hydra, and continued it at Naples in 1875. From Messina, where he became Professor in 1875, Kleinenberg sent me for publication in the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science his valuable memoir on the embryology of a species of Earthworm, and also rare and interesting specimens of Cephalopoda.
Another great and noteworthy figure about whom all zoologists are glad to learn as much as possible is Kovalevsky. Metchnikoff made his acquaintance at Naples in 1864, and they formed a close friendship for one another. Later, in 1867, they shared the Baer Prize of the Petersburg Academy for their discoveries in embryology (p. [58]). In 1868 Metchnikoff had a dispute with Kovalevsky as to the origin of the nervous system of Ascidia (p. [62]), concerning which he subsequently admitted that he was wrong and Kovalevsky right. There is no doubt that Kovalevsky, by his numerous important investigations of invertebrate embryology, and especially of that of Ascidia and Amphioxus, laid the foundation of cellular Embryology, and the modern study of the embryology of Invertebrates. Metchnikoff’s contributions were also of great value and importance (pp. [51], [52], [53], and pp. [72] and [73]), though he has not so great a triumph in animal morphology to his credit as Kovalevsky’s discovery of the close identities of the development of organs in Ascidia and Amphioxus. I had long cherished profound esteem for Kovalevsky when in 1896 I met him and his daughter at Wimereux with Professor Giard. He came in the autumn of that year to London, but left unexpectedly owing to some nervous fear of annoyance by the police. The great position of Kovalevsky was deliberately ignored in a German history of Zoology,[2] published just before the Great War. Metchnikoff describes Kovalevsky as a young man, small and timid, with shy but cordial manners and the clear sweet eyes of a child: he had (like Metchnikoff) for Science an absolute cult—“no sacrifice was too great, no difficulty too repellent for his ardour.”
It is, I think, desirable to assure the reader of this book that the actual state of knowledge in regard to various subjects discussed in the Life at the time when they were made the subjects of study by Metchnikoff is fairly and correctly sketched, and the growth and development of his views and original discoveries are correctly given. But it must be remembered that this Life is not a critical discussion of the steps by which our knowledge of cell-layers, of intracellular digestion, and other factors contributory to Metchnikoff’s doctrine of Phagocytosis and its outcomes were reached. Others played an important if a subsidiary part in building up that knowledge. What we have here is an account of the growth of Metchnikoff’s own observations and theoretical inferences, which were so independent, and founded on such decisive original observations, as to make him a solitary figure contending, and successfully contending, during the best years of his lifetime for the recognition of a great generalisation for long opposed by most of the medical and physiological authorities of the time, and finally established by his lifelong researches and those of his faithful pupils and coadjutors. The recognition of the validity of the doctrine of phagocytosis in relation to wounds, disease, immunity, and normal healthy life is the triumphant result of the scientific insight and boundless energy of Elie Metchnikoff.
E. RAY LANKESTER.
[CONTENTS]
| PAGE | |
| PREFACE | [v] |
| INTRODUCTION | [xxi] |
| CHAPTER I | |
| 1845. Panassovka — Metchnikoff’s parents — Country life in Little Russia | [1] |
| CHAPTER II | |
| Metchnikoff’s brothers and sister — Childish characteristics | [8] |
| CHAPTER III | |
| 1850. Journey to Slaviansk — The coach attacked by peasants | [12] |
| CHAPTER IV | |
| 1851. Departure for Kharkoff — Town life | [16] |
| CHAPTER V | |
| 1853-1856. Leo Metchnikoff’s illness — Private tutors — Botanical studies — A memorable birthday | [19] |
| CHAPTER VI | |
| Ancestors of the Metchnikoff family — The great “Spatar” — Leo Nevahovitch | [23] |
| CHAPTER VII | |
| 1856-1861. The Kharkoff Lycée — Bogomoloff and Socialism — Atheism — Natural History studies — Private lodgings — Private lessons in histology from Professor Tschelkoff — A borrowed microscope — First article — Italian opera — The gold medal | [28] |
| CHAPTER VIII | |
| An early love — A schoolfellow’s sister — A pretty sister-in-law | [35] |
| CHAPTER IX | |
| 1862. Journey to Germany — Leipzig, Würzburg — A hasty return | [37] |
| CHAPTER X | |
| 1863. Kharkoff University — Physiology — The Vorticella — Controversy with Kühne — The Origin of Species — Gastrotricha — University degree | [40] |
| CHAPTER XI | |
| 1864-1866. Heligoland — Giessen Congress — Leuckart — Visit to Leo Metchnikoff at Geneva — Socialist gatherings — Metchnikoff’s discovery appropriated by Leuckart — Naples — Kovalevsky — Comparative embryology — Embryonic layers — Bakounine and Setchénoff — Cholera at Naples — Göttingen — Anatomical studies — Munich; von Siebold — Music — Return to Naples — Intracellular digestion | [43] |
| CHAPTER XII | |
| 1867-1868. Petersburg — Baer Prize — Return home — Friendship with Cienkovsky — Odessa — Naturalists’ Congress at Petersburg — Departure from Odessa — Zoological Lecturer’s Chair at Petersburg — Messina — Enforced rest — Reggio — Naples — Controversy with Kovalevsky — Visit to the B. family — Mlle. Fédorovitch — Educational questions — Difficulties of life in Petersburg | [58] |
| CHAPTER XIII | |
| 1868-1873. Slight illness — Engagement to Mlle. Fédorovitch — Marriage — Illness of the bride — Pecuniary difficulties — Spezzia — Montreux — Work in Petersburg University — The Riviera — Cœlomata and Acœlomata — St. Vaast — Panassovka — Madeira — Mertens — Teneriffe — Return to Odessa — Bad news, hurried journey to Madeira — Death of his wife (1872) — Return through Spain — Attempted suicide — Ephemeridæ | [65] |
| CHAPTER XIV | |
| 1874. Anthropological expedition to the Kalmuk steppes — Affection of the eyes — Second expedition to the steppes — The eggs of the Geophilus | [82] |
| CHAPTER XV | |
| 1875. Studies on childhood — The family in the upper flat — Lessons in zoology — Second marriage — Private life — Visit and death of Lvovna Nevahovna — Conjugal affection | [86] |
| CHAPTER XVI | |
| 1875-1880. Metchnikoff at the age of 30 — Lecturing in Odessa University, from 1873 to 1882 — Internal difficulties — Assassination of the Tsar, Alexander II. — Further troubles in the University — Resignation — Bad health: cardiac symptoms — Relapsing fever — Choroiditis — Studies on Ephemeridæ — Further studies on intracellular digestion — The Parenchymella — Holidays in the country — Experiments on agricultural pests | [96] |
| CHAPTER XVII | |
| 1881-1882. Death of his father- and mother-in-law — Management of country estates — Agitation and difficulties — Departure for Messina with young brothers- and sisters-in-law | [112] |
| CHAPTER XVIII | |
| 1883. Messina — Inception of the phagocyte theory — Encouragement from Virchow and Kleinenberg — First paper on phagocytosis at a Congress at Odessa in 1883 — The question of immunity — Article in Virchow’s Archiv, 1884 | [115] |
| CHAPTER XIX | |
| 1884-1885. Ill-health of his wife and sister-in-law — Journey to Tangiers through Spain — Villefranche — Baumgarten criticises the phagocyte theory | [123] |
| CHAPTER XX | |
| 1886. A Bacteriological Institute in Odessa — Unsatisfactory conditions — Experiments on erysipelas and on relapsing fever | [127] |
| CHAPTER XXI | |
| 1887. Hygiene Congress in Vienna — Wiesbaden — Munich — Paris and Pasteur — Berlin and Koch — Failure of anthrax vaccination of sheep — Decision to leave Russia | [131] |
| CHAPTER XXII | |
| 1888. The Pasteur Institute — Dreams realised — Metchnikoff at 50 — Growing optimism — Attenuated sensitiveness — The Sèvres villa (1898) — Daily routine | [135] |
| CHAPTER XXIII | |
| 1892. Opposition to the phagocyte theory — Scientific controversies — Experiments in support of the phagocyte theory — Behring and antitoxins — The London Congress — Inflammation | [147] |
| CHAPTER XXIV | |
| Cholera — Experiments on himself and others — Illness of M. Jupille — Death of an epileptic subject — Insufficient results | [154] |
| CHAPTER XXV | |
| 1894. Pfeiffer’s experiments — The Buda-Pest Congress — Extracellular destruction of microbes — Reaction of the organism against toxins — Dr. Besredka’s researches — Macrophages — The Moscow Congress — Bordet’s experiments | [158] |
| CHAPTER XXVI | |
| 1900. Immunity — Natural immunity — Artificial immunity | [168] |
| CHAPTER XXVII | |
| 1893-1905. Private sorrows — Death of Pasteur — Ill-health — Senile atrophies — Premature death — Orthobiosis — Syphilis (1905) — Acquisition of anthropoid apes (1903) | [181] |
| CHAPTER XXVIII | |
| Researches on the intestinal flora — Sour milk | [196] |
| CHAPTER XXIX | |
| 1908. The Nobel Prize — Journey to Sweden and Russia — A day with Léon Tolstoï | [199] |
| CHAPTER XXX | |
| Intestinal flora — Infantile cholera — Typhoid fever — Articles on popular Science | [206] |
| CHAPTER XXXI | |
| 1911. Expedition to the Kalmuk steppes to study tuberculosis — Plague | [210] |
| CHAPTER XXXII | |
| Further researches on the intestinal flora — Forty Years’ Search for a Rational Conception of Life | [220] |
| CHAPTER XXXIII | |
| Unpleasant incidents — The fabrication of lacto-bacilli — St. Léger-en-Yvelines — Return to Paris — First cardiac attack — Evolution of the death instinct — Notes on his symptoms | [225] |
| CHAPTER XXXIV | |
| 1914. Return to St. Léger-en-Yvelines — Norka — Studies on the death of the silk-worm moth — War declared — Mobilisation | [237] |
| CHAPTER XXXV | |
| 1915. Return to Paris — The deserted Institute — Memoir on the Founders of Modern Medicine — Metchnikoff’s Jubilee — Last holidays at Norka | [244] |
| CHAPTER XXXVI | |
| 1916. Bronchial cold — Aggravated cardiac symptoms — Farewell to Sèvres — Return to the Institute — Protracted sufferings — Intellectual preoccupations — Observations on his own condition — The end — Cremation. | [254] |
| EPILOGUE | [276] |
| BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX | [285] |
| INDEX | [291] |