Annual Report of the Council. xxix. 



Dr. Elie Metschnikoff. — Sixteen years ago the members of the 

 Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society had the privilege of 

 hearing the Wilde lecture delivered by Dr. Metschnikoff entitled, 

 " Sur la Flore du Corps Humain." 



In this lecture the distinguished Russian biologist gave us a most 

 in,teresting summary of our knowledge of the microbes that are found 

 under normal conditions in the human skin and alimentary canal. 

 He expounded in a masterly manner the reasons for believing that 

 many of these organisms are definitely the cause of disease and are 

 responsible for the infirmities of old age that ultimately end in death. 



This lecture gives us a clear insight into the thesis that occupied 

 the mind and absorbed the indefatigable labours of the last period of 

 his distinguished career. 



A follower of the great Pasteur, and for many years the most dis- 

 tinguished investigator in the famous Pasteur Institute in Paris, he 

 believed that the method of the study of micro-organisms that are 

 associated with the animal body is the method which will yield the 

 most valuable results not only in the cure and prevention of disease 

 but also in the prolongation of the normal human life. But although 

 a follower of Pasteur and for six years his colleague in the Pasteur 

 Institute he must not be regarded as a pupil of Pasteur, for he came to 

 Paris in 1888 with a reputation already well established by his writings 

 on Phagocytosis and his ideas and lines of research, although ultimately 

 concerned with micro-organisms and their relation to disease, were the 

 result of his own independent investigations. 



He was born in 1845 at Ivanaka near Kharkoff, his father being 

 an officer in the Russian Imperial Guard. He took his degree 

 examination in 1864 and after a brief visit to Heligoland went to 

 Leuckart's laboratory in Giessen in order to extend his knowledge of 

 the Biological Sciences. Before going to Germany he had already 

 shown his ability in zoological research work by two short papers on 

 the stalk of Vorticelia and on the nematode worm Diplogaster, but in 

 Leuckart's laboratory he made his first great discovery which was 

 published in a paper, that has become famous in the literature of 

 Zoology, on the life history of the Ascaris nigrovenosa, parasitic in 

 the Frog. From this time (1866) onwards he continued to make 

 investigations on a variety of subjects in Zoological Science, and the 

 number of papers he published in rapid succession showed his 

 extraordinary faculty for investigation and untiring industry. 



In 1870 he was appointed Professor Ordinarius of Zoology in the 

 University of Odessa, and during the twelve years that he occupied that 

 chair he published several important memoirs on the embryology of 

 Chelifer, of Myriapods and of the Annelid worms. 



In 1882 he resigned his chair in Odessa, owing to political 

 disturbances, and migrated to Messina where he devoted his time to 

 researches on the marine fauna of the straits. It was from Messina 



