116 LIFE OF ELIE METCHNIKOFF 



became a pathologist. I entered into a new road in which 

 my later activity was to be exerted. 



It is with warm feeling that I evoke that distant past 

 and with tenderness that I think of Messina, of which the 

 terrible fate has deeply moved my heart. 



They say that Messina will be rebuilt in the same place 

 but in a different way. Houses will be constructed of light 

 materials, they will be low, and the streets broad. . . . 



The town will be a new Messina, not " my Messina," not 

 that with which so many dear memories are associated in 

 my mind. . . . 



Metchnikoff continued to study intracellular diges- 

 tion and the origin of the intestine. He foresaw 

 that the solution of those problems would lead to 

 general results of great importance. The study of 

 medusae and of their mesodermic digestion confirmed 

 him more and more in the conviction that the meso- 

 derm was a vestige of elements with a primitive 

 digestive function. In lower beings, such as sponges, 

 this function takes place without being differentiated, 

 whilst with other Coelentera and with some Ecnino- 

 derma the endoderm gives birth to a digestive 

 cavity ; yet, the mobile cells of the mesoderm pre- 

 serve their faculty of intracellular digestion. As he 

 studied these phenomena more closely, he ascertained 

 that mesodermic cells accumulated around grains of 

 carmine introduced into the organism. 



All this prepared the ground for the phagocyte 

 theory, of which he himself described the inception 

 in the following words : 



I was resting from the shock of the events which provoked 

 my resignation from the University and indulging enthusi- 

 astically in researches in the splendid setting of the Straits 

 of Messina. 



One day when the whole family had gone to a circus to see 



