It was especially the development of pure scientific research in the Institute which interested Metchnikoff; he continually considered means of contributing towards it; he thought it necessary to attract active scientific forces regardless of their origin, to institute generous scientific “scholarships,” and to stimulate by every means scientific activity and spirit.
As the rapid development of bacteriology necessitated having recourse to chemistry, physics, and physiology, he considered it indispensable to organise collective work in which specialists in these divers branches should take part, thus collaborating to the solution of the same problem. Later he was able to realise this project, up to a certain point, in his own laboratory, when studying intestinal flora.
He thought it would be useful to extend this method, as far as possible, to researches such as that on tuberculosis and on cancer, such researches being complicated and protracted and demanding co-ordinate efforts and an organisation that should prevent the repetition of individual first steps. A clinic attached to the Pasteur Institute and adapted to scientific researches seemed to him indispensable.
He also considered that the experimental study of those human diseases which can only be inoculated in anthropoid apes should be carried out through the breeding of those animals in the colonies, for infantile diseases demand very young apes as subjects for experiments, and they cannot be brought to Europe in sufficient numbers without great loss. A mission of workers might carry out experiments on the spot.
He thought the popularisation of science a very useful thing and wished the Pasteur Institute to participate in it by appropriate courses of public lectures. He attached great importance to the penetration into ordinary life of results acquired by science, for the struggle against disease consists chiefly in prophylactic and hygienic measures which can only be applied by a well-informed public. For that reason he was always willing to be interviewed on scientific questions by journalists and, indeed, by any one, however ignorant. In order to instruct the public he often wrote popular articles on questions of hygiene and medicine.
Science in general never was a dead letter for him; his most abstract conceptions were always narrowly bound to life; he saw one through the other and considered that they should serve each other.
Apart from scientific researches, he took part in the courses given at the Pasteur Institute. He prepared his lectures with infinite care, and, in spite of his long experience, he never could give them without some nervousness, especially during the last years of his life. He used even to write down the first sentences and to read them out in order to give himself time to recover; but very soon his self-control would return, and he would proceed with animation and lucidity; his lectures were living and suggestive.
I have mentioned above Roux’s masterly appreciation of his influence at the Pasteur Institute. The following was written to me, a year after Metchnikoff’s death, by one of his closest disciples and collaborators, and describes in a vivid manner the deep feelings with which he inspired his pupils:
"You say that you love to think that he continues to live in others. Could it have been otherwise? A character as powerful as his is capable of influencing and illuminating the life, not of one individual, but of a whole generation. I look upon it as the greatest good fortune of my life that I was able to spend my best years in his orbit and to impregnate my mind with his spirit, not his scientific spirit, but that which he manifested in facing life and humanity.
“This bond has become so much part of myself that my first impulse is always to act in the way he would have approved. I even feel the need to share with others what I received from him. I do not know whether it will be given to me to solve certain problems posed by him, but I have the conviction that his spirit, in its purity, will be preserved among us. He will ever live in those who worked by his side, and in those who will come to work in his laboratory. It cannot be otherwise.”