230 LIFE OF ELIE METCHNIKOFF 



irregular. I lunched in order not to alarm my wife, though I 

 feared to aggravate the attack by filling my stomach. 



But the opposite happened. From the first mouthfuls (I 

 naturally eat very little) the pain became more tolerable 

 and the pulse less frequent. After lunch, everything became 

 normal again ; the pain ceased, the pulsations slackened (78- 

 80 per min.) and became much more regular. Intermittence 

 was rare, and I several times counted 100 regular beats in 

 succession. I remained absolutely conscious during the whole 

 crisis, and what chiefly pleased me is that I felt no fear of 

 death, which I was expecting at every moment. It was not 

 only reasoning which made me understand that it was better 

 to die now, whilst my intellectual powers had not yet gone 

 from me and I had evidently accomplished all of what I was 

 capable ; I resigned myself also in feeling, and quite serenely 

 to the catastrophe which was coming upon me and which 

 would be far from unexpected. 



My mother, who had suffered from heart attacks during 

 a great part of her life, died at 65. My father died of apoplexy 

 in his 68th year. 



My eldest sister succumbed to an oedema of the brain ; 

 my brother Nicholas died at 57 of angina pectoris. 



Undoubtedly my cardiac heredity is a bad one. Already 

 in my youth, I suffered from my heart. At 33 I had such 

 cardiac pains that sometimes I had to rest after walking a 

 few paces. At 34, I had much giddiness and a feeling of 

 heaviness in the head. I could not read a few lines, a poster 

 even, without a painful sensation. In 1881, during relapsing 

 fever, I had severe cardiac intermittence, very fatiguing and 

 only relieved by small doses of digitalin. 



I afterwards had periodical attacks of intermittence but 

 never any tachycardia, at least none that lasted more than a 

 few seconds. A little tincture of strophanthus used to relieve 

 me during intermittence. I ended by consulting Dr. Vaquez, 

 but the treatment he prescribed gave me no relief. As I 

 attributed my condition to poisoning by the toxins of intestinal 

 microbes, I resolved to give up raw food and to purge myself 

 now and then with Carabana water. The success of this 



