LIFE OF ELIE METCHNIKOFF 41 



but his mother dissuaded him. " You are too sensi- 

 tive," she said, " you could not bear the constant 

 sight of human suffering." At the same time, 

 Tschelkofi suggested the Natural Science Faculty as 

 being more appropriate to purely scientific activity. 

 Elie accepted his opinion and began to study physio- / 

 logy under his direction. His great desire was to 

 embark at once on personal research, and his teacher 

 advised him to study the mobile stalk of a ciliated 

 Infusorian, the Vorticella. The question was to deter- 

 mine whether this stalk presented any analogy with 

 muscular tissue and whether it offered the same 

 reactions. Elie set to work with ardour and found 

 that the stalk of the Vorticella had no muscular 

 character. His memoir on the subject appeared in 

 1863 in Miiller's Archives. It provoked a severe, even 

 brutal, answer from the celebrated physiologist Kiihne 

 which deeply grieved the young scientist and, stimu- 

 lating his energy still further, incited him to repeat 

 his experiments. He obtained the same results as 

 the first time, and answered Kiihne in a somewhat 

 bitter manner, the latter's tone having stirred his 

 combativity. 



Meanwhile, Elie was yearning for independent and j 

 more general study. During his unsuccessful journey, 

 he had acquired in Leipzig many recently published 

 scientific books, and, among them, Darwin's Origin of 

 Species. The theory of evolution deeply struck the 

 boy's mind and his thoughts immediately turned in 

 that direction. He said to himself that isolated forms 

 which had found no place in definite animal or 

 vegetable orders might perhaps serve as a bond be- 

 tween those orders and elucidate their genetic rela- 

 tionships. This leading idea made him choose for 



