XXX. Annual Report of the Council. 



that he pubHshed a remarkable series of papers on the process which 

 he called " Sporogony " in the development of certain jelly-fishes, 

 and the curious kind of parasitism of the larva of one kind of jelly-fish 

 (Cunina) on the swimming-bell of another (Carmarina). 



The remarkable wandering habits of the microscopic sporogenetic 

 broods of the Cunina specially attracted his attention and interest as 

 he was at the same period beginning his important investigations on 

 the wandering amoeboid corpuscles found in the blood and tissues of 

 the higher Invertebrates and the phenomena of intra-cellular digestion 

 which they exhibited. As a result of the interest excited in these 

 researches on the marine fauna at Messina he came to devote himself 

 almost entirely to the functions of the wandering cells of the animal 

 organism and more particularly to their powers of ingestion and 

 destruction of the poisonous microbes that so frequently cause disease 

 and death. To him we are indebted for the introduction of the term 

 " Phagocytes " which he applied to these scavenger cells that, as he 

 was the first to demonstrate, play such an important part in the 

 maintenance of health. 



In 1888 he went to Paris, and being heartily welcomed by Pasteur 

 who gave him every facility for continuing his investigations on his own 

 lines, he plunged at once into the problems of animal health and disease 

 that arose from his work and theory of phagocytosis, and in 1901, the 

 year that he came over to deliver the Wilde lecture in Manchester, he 

 published his important book entitled, " L'Immunite contre les malades 

 infectieuses." The importance of MetschnikofiPs researches on the 

 problems of disease and on inflammation received recognition by 

 the reward of medals and foreign membership of many of the learned 

 Societies of Europe, and in 1908 he received the Nobel Prize for his 

 medical discoveries. 



Metschnikoffwas twice married. His second wife, Olga Belocoyitoff, 

 who was married to him in 1875, ^^^ herself a trained zoologist. She 

 was his constant companion in his travels abroad and many of our 

 members will remember her visit to Manchester in 1901, when she 

 accompanied her husband on the occasion of his Wilde lecture. She 

 was able to assist him in the laboratory, and herself published some 

 contributions to scientific knowledge. During his visits to England 

 she frequently acted as his interpreter as she was an excellent linguist 

 and he was not fluent in the English language. 



The end of his long and valuable career came in the residence 

 attached to the Pasteur Institute on July isth, 191 6. 



S. J H, 



