140 LIFE OF ELIE METCHNIKOFF 



solution of the same problem. Later lie was able to 

 realise this project, up to a certain point, in his own 

 laboratory, when studying intestinal flora. 



He thought it would be useful to extend this 

 method, as far as possible, to researches such as that 

 on tuberculosis and on cancer, such researches being 

 complicated and protracted and demanding co-ordinate 

 efforts and an organisation that should prevent the 

 repetition of individual first steps. A clinic attached 

 to the Pasteur Institute and adapted to scientific 

 researches seemed to him indispensable. 



He also considered that the experimental study 

 of those human diseases which can only be inoculated 

 in anthropoid apes should be carried out through 

 the breeding of those animals in the colonies, for 

 infantile diseases demand very young apes as subjects 

 for experiments, and they cannot be brought to Europe 

 in sufficient numbers without great loss. A mission 

 of workers might carry out experiments on the spot. 



He thought the popularisation of science a very 

 useful thing and wished the Pasteur Institute to 

 participate in it by appropriate courses of public 

 lectures. He attached great importance to the pene- 

 tration into ordinary life of results acquired by science, 

 for the struggle against disease consists chiefly in 

 prophylactic and hygienic measures which can only 

 be applied by a well-informed public. For that 

 reason he was always willing to be interviewed on 

 scientific questions by journalists and, indeed, by any 

 one, however ignorant. In order to instruct the public 

 he often wrote popular articles on questions of hygiene 

 and medicine. 



Science in general never was a dead letter for him ; 

 his most abstract conceptions were always narrowly 



