208 LIFE OF ELIE METCHNIKOFF 



by pure cultures of Eberth's bacillus, which definitely 

 confirmed the specificity of that microbe. 



Antityphoid vaccination by means of killed bacilli 

 not being at that time either safe or durable, Metch- 

 nikoff advised measures of simple preventive hygiene : 

 the use of cooked food, great personal cleanliness, 

 cleanliness of streets and dwellings, and the destruction 

 of insects, especially flies, which often infect food. 

 In order to popularise these notions, he wrote a series 

 of articles in newspapers. Later, several scientists 

 found efficacious means of vaccination against typhoid 

 fever. 



In 1912 Metchnikoff, in collaboration with Dr. 

 Besredka (the author of the antityphoid vaccination 

 method by means of sensitised bacilli), demon- 

 strated on anthropoid apes that antityphoid vaccina- 

 tion by living sensitised microbes is certain, and 

 that it presents no danger of diffusing the disease, for 

 these microbes, harmless to the vaccinated individual, 

 cannot prove a source of danger for his entourage, 

 since they are phagocyted at the very place where 

 they are inoculated. 



Metchnikoff always considered that it was very 

 useful to keep the public at large informed of the 

 results acquired by Science, because "it is only by 

 becoming a part of daily life that measures of hygiene 

 and prophylaxis will have efficacious results." He 

 therefore lost no opportunity of spreading scientific 

 principles and facts. In 1908 he had given in Berlin 

 a lecture on " The Curative Forces of the Organism." 

 In a Russian review, the Messenger of Europe, he 

 developed the same subject and included an epitome 

 of his lecture in Stockholm on immunity. In that 

 article he expounded the phagocyte theory of im- 



