522 Chapter XVI 



animal. These researches resulted in several theses for the doctor's 

 degree which sought to demolish every point of the theory of 

 phagocytosis. 



Later, Baumgarten 1 published a long and above all admirably 

 written analytical article entitled: "Zur Kritik der Metschnikoff'- 

 schen Phagocytentheorie," in which, with much talent and wit, he 

 attempted to demolish the bases and conclusions of the phagocytic 

 theory. 



Baumgarten regards the precise observations which I had been 

 accumulating for some years as incorrect and refuted by the observa- 

 tions and experiments of his pupils. The arguments that I give to 

 justify my theory are, according to the same critic, contrary to logic 

 and to truth. If the phagocytes are really elements destined to 

 guarantee the integrity of the animal organism how is it, asks 

 Baumgarten, that just at the moment of greatest danger, when the 

 blood and the tissues are invaded by the micro-organisms, the 

 leucocytes are conspicuous by their absence ? The answer that there 

 is no predestination in the phagocytosis, and that the danger is the 

 greater the more feeble the phagocytic reaction a fact which is in 

 perfect harmony with the law of causes and with the principles 

 of the evolution of species according to Darwin's theory did not 

 satisfy my critic. He says : " If the interpretation which Metschnikoff 

 gives of the activity of the leucocytes appears to be rather the 

 product of a rich imagination than the result of the objective obser- 

 vation of the seeker, it matters little that his account of the develop- 

 ment of the leucocyte in what he wishes to see in it should be in 

 conformity with the principles of the theory of evolution " (p. 4). 



I was able by numerous researches 2 to refute point by point the 

 [546] objections based on the work of Baumgarten's pupils, but that did 

 not prevent him from persisting in his negation. Only, commencing 

 by writing long articles, he contented himself, later, with denying the 

 theory of phagocytosis in small annual notes, appearing in his reviews 

 of works on bacteriology, which were unsupported either by argument 

 or by any facts mentioned in his abstracts. 



Baumgarten's example was followed by many other pathologists. 

 Ziegler, the well-known author of a text-book on pathological 

 anatomy that has certainly had a wider circulation than any other 



1 Ztschr.f. klin. Med., Berlin, 1888, Bd. xv, S. 1. 



2 Virchow's Archiv, 1888, Bd. cxiv, S. 465 ; Ann. de I'Inst. Pasteur, Paris, 

 1890, t iv, p. 35. 



