Historical sketch on Immunity 521 



and by killing these cells with their poisons. The history of this 

 disease and of this struggle was published in Virchow's Archiv 1 . 



Some time afterwards I published in the same journal my work 

 on the anthrax bacillus 2 , in which I attempted to demonstrate that 

 in the Vertebrata also the invasion of pathogenic micro-organisms 

 sets up a desperate struggle between them and the amoeboid cells. 



In these four works I made use of the term "phagocytes" to 

 designate the amoeboid cells capable of seizing and digesting the 

 micro-organisms and other formed elements. To the theory based 

 on this property of the defensive cells I gave the name of " theory of 

 phagocytes." 



I thought, as already mentioned above, that the observations on 

 absorption and leucocytes, which had been accumulating for years in 

 pathological histology, had sufficiently paved the way for a favourable 

 reception to the idea that the amoeboid cells are defensive elements 

 of the body capable of guaranteeing to it immunity and cure. In 

 this I was mistaken. It was precisely the specialists in this branch of 

 science who from the first manifested the most lively opposition to 

 this theory. 



However, in the Presidential Address delivered before the 66th 

 meeting of the British Association held at Liverpool in 1896, Lord 

 Lister said 3 : " If ever there was a romantic chapter in pathology, it 

 has surely been that of the story of phagocytosis." These words 

 encourage me to put before the reader the essential features of this 

 story. 



My first two memoirs published in 1883 did not in any way 

 attract the attention of the medical public. These investigations 

 had a character that was too zoological to be noticed by patholo- 

 gists. But the two following publications, in which I treated of the [545] 

 Daphnia disease and especially of bacterial anthrax, immediately 

 roused severe criticism. Baumgarten 4 , the well-known pathologist, 

 opened the battle by the publication of a review of my researches 

 on phagocytosis. He attempted to sap the basis of my theory, and 

 not contented with CL priori arguments, he set his pupils to make 

 a series of researches on the fate of micro-organisms in the refractory 



1 Virchow's Archiv, 1884, Bd. xcvi, S. 177. 



2 Virchow's Archiv, 1884, Bd. xcvn, S. 502. 



3 Rep. Brit. Ass. Adv. Sci., London, 1896, p. 26; Rev. Sclent., Paris, 17 Octobre, 

 1896, p. 493. 



* Bert. klin. Wchnschr., 1884. 



