All these conditions made normal teaching and scientific work impossible, and Metchnikoff, seeing that politics from above and from below now swallowed up everything, tried to take refuge in his laboratory but in vain; even there he could no longer find the necessary calm, and only during the holidays could he really work.
Thus passed the years until March 1, 1881, when the crime which ended the days of Alexander II. was followed by a great reactionary movement. The authorities, seeing conspiracies and plots everywhere, persecuted without cause all the elements which were ticketed as “dangerous.” Though the University still preserved its autonomy, this was entirely fictitious, for the Ministry thwarted every desire for independence; the nomination of professors elected by the University Council was only ratified by the Ministry if they were reactionaries, without any regard for their scientific value. Soon the Chairs were occupied by ignorant men of doubtful morality.
The life and honour of the University became endangered, and Metchnikoff found himself obliged to take part in the struggle; he did so with vehemence and energy; the independence of the University was involved, and, as long as he could hope to save it, he struggled. At the meetings of the Council and of the Faculty he never failed to give vent to his critical opinions with a vehement frankness which earned him in the University the reputation of an “enfant terrible.” In the meanwhile every resolution passed by the Council, if not reactionary in character, was systematically quashed by the Ministry, which thus paralysed every means of action, and Metchnikoff found himself faced with the alternative of submitting or handing in his resignation. He decided for the latter: his convictions were involved, and moreover his health could not withstand the continual agitation and strain on his nerves.
As we could not afford to live in independence, he applied for a vacant post of entomologist in the zemstvo[13] of Poltava, and at the same time wrote out his resignation, holding it in readiness for an opportunity which was not long in coming.
The Conservative party in the Faculty arose against a Liberal professor who had accepted a very clever thesis in which the Reactionaries perceived Socialist tendencies. The Dean of the Faculty proposed that all such theses should be refused, and the Faculty approved. This was the signal for a storm in the University, the Dean was hooted by the students, and many of them were threatened with being expelled. The Curator desired the more influential professors, of whom Metchnikoff was one, to intervene with the students in order to bring disorder to an end, and the professors consented, on condition that the offending Dean should resign. The Curator promised that he should be asked to do so, and order was immediately restored; but the Dean remained and many students were severely and unjustly punished. Metchnikoff thereupon produced his resignation, which was promptly accepted, and thus his University career came to an end.
Besides his University lectures, he gave public lectures on Natural History which were attended by a number of female students, for women at that time were only admitted to the Faculty of Medicine, and these lectures were extremely useful to them. Metchnikoff, though he did not believe that women could accomplish creative work in science, was strongly in favour of higher education for women, considering it as necessary to their general intellectual development. Genius, he thought, was peculiar to the male sex, no woman having created anything “of genius” even in domains which had always been accessible to them, such as music, literature, and the applied arts. The very rare exceptions, to his mind, only proved the rule; yet he did not draw the conclusion that woman was in any sense inferior to man. He merely held that her gifts are different from those of men.
Metchnikoff’s health had been seriously shaken by the emotions and annoyances of university life. Already in 1877, after political intrigues at the University, he had felt the first symptoms of cardiac trouble, which were the beginning of a long period of ill-health. He consulted Bamberger, a great Viennese physician, who, however, found nothing serious, and merely forbade him the use of wine and tobacco, to neither of which was he addicted.
His health suffered further through the violent anxiety which he went through in 1880 whilst I lay dangerously ill with typhoid fever, contracted in Naples. Though worn out with devoted nursing, he tried to make up the time lost to research and over-worked himself, with the result that cardiac trouble was followed by fits of giddiness and unconquerable insomnia. He fell into such a state of neurasthenia that, in 1881, he resolved in a moment of depression to do away with his life.
In order to spare his family the sorrow of an obvious suicide, he inoculated himself with relapsing fever, choosing this disease in order to ascertain at the same time whether it could be inoculated through the blood. The answer was in the affirmative: he became very seriously ill. His condition was aggravated by anxiety concerning the University; for he was sufficiently conscious to be aware of the events which were taking place in Russia. The murder of Alexander II. caused him to foresee a political reaction of the most terrible type; already, a reactionary Rector had been appointed. Metchnikoff developed intense jaundice and had a serious relapse with alarming cardiac weakness; during the crisis he had a very distinct prevision of approaching death. This semi-conscious state was accompanied by a feeling of great happiness; he imagined that he had solved all human ethical questions. Much later, this fact led him to suppose that death could actually be attended by agreeable sensations.