Messina — Inception of the phagocyte theory — Encouragement from Virchow and Kleinenberg — First paper on phagocytosis at the Odessa Congress in 1883 — The question of Immunity — Article in Virchow’s Archiv, 1884.
At Messina, we settled in a suburb, the Ringo, on the quay of the Straits, in a small flat with a garden and a splendid view over the sea. We did not have much room, and the laboratory had to be installed in the drawing-room, but, on the other hand, Elie only had to cross the quay in order to find the fisherman who provided him with the material needed for his researches and with whom we frequently went sailing.
Metchnikoff loved Messina, with its rich marine fauna and beautiful scenery. The splendid view of the sea and the calm outline of the Calabrian coast across the Straits delighted him. He enjoyed it all the more after the many excitements of life at the University, and eagerly gave himself up to his researches. Often, in later years, he delighted to recall memories of that period, the more so that this was connected with the principal phase of scientific activity which led to the formation of his phagocyte theory. After the earthquake in 1908, he wrote a few pages on Messina and ended his article by the following lines:
Thus it was in Messina that the great event of my scientific life took place. A zoologist until then, I suddenly became a pathologist. I entered into a new road in which my later activity was to be exerted.
It is with warm feeling that I evoke that distant past and with tenderness that I think of Messina, of which the terrible fate has deeply moved my heart.
They say that Messina will be rebuilt in the same place but in a different way. Houses will be constructed of light materials, they will be low, and the streets broad....
The town will be a new Messina, not “my Messina,” not that with which so many dear memories are associated in my mind....
Metchnikoff continued to study intracellular digestion and the origin of the intestine. He foresaw that the solution of those problems would lead to general results of great importance. The study of medusæ and of their mesodermic digestion confirmed him more and more in the conviction that the mesoderm was a vestige of elements with a primitive digestive function. In lower beings, such as sponges, this function takes place without being differentiated, whilst with other Cœlentera and with some Echinoderma the endoderm gives birth to a digestive cavity; yet, the mobile cells of the mesoderm preserve their faculty of intracellular digestion. As he studied these phenomena more closely, he ascertained that mesodermic cells accumulated around grains of carmine introduced into the organism.
All this prepared the ground for the phagocyte theory, of which he himself described the inception in the following words:
I was resting from the shock of the events which provoked my resignation from the University and indulging enthusiastically in researches in the splendid setting of the Straits of Messina.