The Project Gutenberg eBook, Life of Elie Metchnikoff, 1845-1916, by Olga Metchnikoff

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: Life of Elie Metchnikoff, 1845-1916

Author: Olga Metchnikoff

Release Date: November 16, 2013 [eBook #44194]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF ELIE METCHNIKOFF, 1845-1916***

 

E-text prepared by Charlene Taylor, Norbert Müller,
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net)
from page images generously made available by
Internet Archive/American Libraries
(https://archive.org/details/americana)

 

Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive/American Libraries. See https://archive.org/details/lifeofeliemetchn00mechiala

 

---

 

 

 

AUTHORISED TRANSLATION FROM THE FRENCH

LIFE OF
ELIE METCHNIKOFF

1845-1916

BY
OLGA METCHNIKOFF

WITH A PREFACE BY
Sir RAY LANKESTER K.C.B. F.R.S.

LONDON
CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LTD.
1921

---

PREFACE

It has been a great satisfaction to me to carry out the wish of my dear friend Elie Metchnikoff, and arrange for the production of an English translation of his biography. The account of his life and work written by Olga Metchnikoff is a remarkable and beautiful record of the development and activities of a great discoverer. It is remarkable because it is seldom that one who undertakes such a task has had so constant a share in, and so complete a knowledge and understanding of, the life portrayed as in the present case: seldom that the intimate thought and mental “adventure” of a discoverer presents so clear and consistent a history. It is beautiful because it is put before us with perfect candour and simplicity guided by rare intelligence and inspired by deep affection. Madame Metchnikoff has drawn the picture of the development of a single-minded character absolutely and tenaciously devoted to a high purpose—the improvement of human life. It is a story of “struggles and adventures,” but they are wholly in the field of the investigation of Nature. We read here little or nothing of the quest for personal advancement, for fortune or official position. These things had no attraction for Metchnikoff. He left Russia and took an unpaid post in Paris in order to have a place to work in. He had many devoted friends in whose company he sought refreshment and relaxation, but all his immense energy and industry were concentrated on the development and establishment of his great biological theory of “Phagocytosis” and its outcome, the philosophy of life called by him “Orthobiosis.” This volume tells truly of a simple life—a life in which the social incidents which fill so large a space in most lives were either non-existent or unnoticed because, by the side of the great purpose which dominated Metchnikoff’s every thought and action—namely, the advancement of Science—he was not touched by them. He was affectionate, kind-hearted, and truly considerate of others, but was, in a way which is traceable to his racial origin, a practical idealist concentrating his whole strength and reason on the realisation of what he held to be the highest good.

I had as an eager reader of memoirs on biological subjects become acquainted with Metchnikoff’s earliest publications in 1865, when he was twenty years of age and I two years younger. I wrote short accounts of them, as they appeared, for a chronicle of progress in the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, then edited by my father. Those on a European Land Planarian, on the development of Myzostomum (the parasite of the Feather-Star), on Apsilus, a strange new kind of wheel-animalcule, and his protest against Rudolf Leuckart’s treatment of him in the matter of his important discoveries concerning the Frog’s lung-worm—Ascaris nigrovenosa—remain in my memory, and later, in 1872, I was especially struck by his important demonstration of the true mode of development of the gastrula of the calcareous sponges in correction of Professor Ernst Haeckel. Many other papers of his became known to me, until in 1881 he published his first observations on Intracellular Digestion in Lower Animals, which was the starting-point of his life’s work on “Phagocytosis,” to which all his subsequent researches—during thirty-five years—were exclusively dedicated.

In 1888 I was introduced by my friend Lauder Brunton to the great Pasteur, and called on him at his laboratory in the rue d’Ulm. There I met Metchnikoff, only lately arrived from Russia, and welcomed as one of his staff by Pasteur. The next year, 1889, Pasteur was installed in the new “Institut Pasteur” in the rue Dutot, and I met Metchnikoff there in his new quarters. Pasteur’s assistants were carrying on daily his system of inoculation against rabies, and many British subjects were amongst those treated. I persuaded the Lord Mayor of that year, Sir James Whitehead, to visit the Pasteur Institute with a view to taking steps to make some recognition of the services rendered by Pasteur to our fellow-countrymen in treating over two hundred of them threatened with hydrophobia. Sir James called a meeting on July 1, 1889, at the Mansion House, and placed the management of it in my hands. As a result we obtained subscriptions to a fund which enabled us to assist many poor British subjects to visit Paris for the purpose of undergoing M. Pasteur’s treatment, to make a donation of 30,000 francs to the Pasteur Institute, and to initiate with a sum of £300 the formation of a fund for the purpose of establishing an Institute in London similar in purpose and character to the Institut Pasteur. That initial fund has step by step received generous additions and given us the “Lister Institute” on Chelsea Embankment possessed of buildings, site, and capital valued at more than £300,000.

After 1889 it was rare for a year to pass without my visiting Paris both in spring and summer, and seeing a great deal of Metchnikoff and his friends Roux, Duclaux, Laveran, and the great master of the Pastorians, who died in 1895. Metchnikoff took me to his home and cemented his friendship with me by bringing to me that of his gifted and devoted wife.

Madame Metchnikoff had when a schoolgirl studied zoology under her future husband at Odessa, and now was able to give serious help in some of his researches. She published some experimental investigation on the sterilisation of the alimentary canal of tadpoles and some other researches, and having a thorough knowledge of English, which

Elie did not possess, she helped him in reading and translating from that language. But her chief talents were in the arts of painting and sculpture, and when they purchased their country house at Sèvres, she built a studio in the garden in which to pursue her vocation.

Metchnikoff on several occasions came to England to take part in “congresses” or to give special addresses, and often stayed a day or two with me in London.[1] I was with him at the Darwin Celebration at Cambridge in 1909, and the last occasion when he came was to give the Priestley Lecture of the National Health Society in November 1912. At my request he selected “The Warfare against Tuberculosis” as his subject, and gave a most valuable account of the history and actual condition of that enterprise, relating the important results of his expedition to the Kalmuk Tartars for the purpose of studying the immunity from and the liability to infection by tuberculosis among that nomad population. The lecture was delivered in French, and I made a translation of it which appeared with numerous illustrations in the journal called Bedrock, published by Constable & Co. I mention that publication here as it is the only one excepting the three lectures on “The New Hygiene” (Heinemann, London, 1906) originally published in an English form by Metchnikoff, and deserves more attention from the English medical public than it has received.

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

class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">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

---

INTRODUCTION

On a calm summer evening we were seated together on our terrace.

On the preceding day, one who hardly knew my husband had come to ask him for information concerning his life, with the object of writing his biography. We were saying to each other how inevitably superficial and incomplete such a biography was bound to be; how difficult such a task is for a biographer, even when fully informed; how necessary it is to be thoroughly acquainted with a man and with every phase of his existence in order to give a truthful picture of his character and of his life. The intimate side is bound to remain more or less closed to a stranger; in order to decipher it, it is indispensable for the writer of a biography to have lived in complete communion of spirit with its subject. Our long past, spent together, fulfilled all these conditions.

My husband’s whole life was well known to me. My mother-in-law had often told me vivid stories of his childhood; he himself willingly talked to me about his past. As to the second part of his existence, we had lived it together.

In order clearly to understand his character, at once both complex and one-sided, it was necessary to possess the key to his psychology. In his life, as in his work, everything was so closely knitted that it was impossible to understand the whole without knowledge of every link of his evolution.

In the soothing calm of that summer evening, I submitted my reflections to him; he warmly encouraged me, and I then and there resolved to write his biography. He advised me to relate his whole life without any reticence, considering that thus alone does a biography justify its existence. That advice was to guide me, within limits, for to dissect an individual life without touching other lives as well is not always possible.

Numerous were the difficulties before me; yet, I considered the task as a mission, hoping, in spite of all, that this biography would present a true picture of the life and evolution of Elie Metchnikoff.

We talked over this project for a long time. The moon now appeared above the trees, the soft light tracing silver designs through the ivy leaves. The lawn, the walnut tree in front of the house, and everything around us was bathed in peaceful radiance. Under its mysterious charm, we ceased to speak, we listened to the inward voices of nature and of our own hearts.

In youth, vague reveries fill our minds; after a long life, distant memories.... He whose life I describe is no more.... Without his help my task could not have been accomplished.

Often, when he was not too tired, he would sit comfortably in his armchair and recount to me with his usual spirit and animation some period or episode of his past. I read to him a sketch of the first part of this biography and a few chapters only of the second, which was hardly begun. Thus we spent many evenings, never to be forgotten.

He wanted this biography written, for he held that the evolution of a mind, of a character, of a human life is always an interesting psychological document. During his long and painful illness, he urged me to relate the “last chapter” of his life; he hoped that his attitude in the face of death might diminish the fear of it in others. Also he considered that men are rare who are conscious until the end; even rarer, those who reach the development of the “death-instinct.” Therefore, according to him, an example would be interesting.

I have tried to accomplish his desire within the measure of my strength.

The only object of this simple and truthful story is to show Elie Metchnikoff as he was, a help, a support, and a lesson to others.

I dedicate this book to his dear memory.

OLGA METCHNIKOFF.

Sèvres, 15th Dec. 1918.

---

class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[1]"/>

over, the cook would make his daily appearance, and the next day’s menu was drawn up by the whole party. After a siesta, gambling was resumed. Thus the days went by in the cult of good cheer and of cards, interspersed with conversations about horses and sometimes about politics.

By this time Ilia Ivanovitch was beginning to become bald and obese. It is difficult to define what was his inner life; not even to his wife did he ever speak of it. As to his children, he petted them when they were small, but as they grew up, their intercourse with him was limited to kissing his hand morning and evening. He was not indifferent to their welfare, but left it entirely to his wife’s active solicitude. The children were on very different terms with their mother; not only did she spoil them, but also always eagerly shared all their childish interests. Owing to that, and to her bright and affectionate disposition, they looked upon her as their intimate friend and confidante.

Masters and servants were on good terms, relations between them were even remarkably human, according to the ideas of the time, and in spite of certain customs inherent to serfdom. For instance, the younger maids were punished by having their faces slapped and their hair pulled. Even the kindly and peaceable Dmitri Ivanovitch would soundly box his valet’s ears when he found him drunk. At that time such things were not thought cruel or humiliating, but looked upon as a paternal correction. The peasants had confidence in their “barin” (master) and consulted him or appealed to his generosity when in trouble.

Ilia Ivanovitch never opposed the free choice of his serfs in matrimony, a rare tolerance at that time. According to custom every betrothed couple came to salute him, the young man in his Sunday clothes and a fine, bright-coloured scarf, the girl wearing an embroidered bodice and a head-dress of many-coloured ribbons. They knelt before him and bowed three times to the ground, then offered him sacramental loaves, hard and shaped like pine cones, on beautifully worked diapers. Ilia Ivanovitch and Emilia Lvovna blessed the bride and bridegroom with “ikons,” embraced them, and gave them a sum of money for the wedding.

The Metchnikoffs were liked by their peasants and looked upon as good masters.

---