METCHNIKOFF AND TOLSTOI 39 



or " chlorophyll " enables green plants to obtain their food 

 from the gases of the atmosphere. France had other 

 representatives in Edmond Perrier, director of the Paris 

 Museum, and Prince Roland Bonaparte. 



Metchnikoff was one of the four representatives 

 selected by the University to deliver orations in the 

 Senate House in honour of Darwin. He especially drew 

 attention to the influence of Darwin's theory on the study 

 of disease. The recognition of the derivation of man from 

 animal ancestors, and of the complete community of the 

 structure and the chemical activity of the organs of man 

 with those of the organs of animals, had made (he said) 

 the study of the diseases of animals a necessary feature 

 in the understanding of the diseases of man. The far- 

 reaching principle of Darwin that the mechanisms and 

 processes observed in the bodies of plants and of animals 

 (including man) must have been selected in the struggle 

 for existence and perpetuated, because of their utility, led 

 Metchnikoff to inquire what is the value or use of the 

 process called inflammation and of the " eating cor- 

 puscles," or "phagocytes" (so named by him), which 

 wander from the blood into inflamed tissues. This 

 question had led him to the discovery that the phagocytes 

 engulf and destroy disease-germs, and are the great 

 protectors of the animal and human body against bacteria 

 and other germs which enter cut and wounded surfaces, 

 and would start disease were there not " inflammation," 

 which is nothing more nor less than a nerve-regulated 

 stagnation of the circulation of the blood at the wounded 

 spot, and the consequent arrival at this spot of thousands 

 of "phagocytes," which pass out of the stagnant blood 

 through the walls of the fine blood-vessels. These armies 

 of phagocytes proceed to eat up and destroy all the germs 

 which fall on to the wound from the air, from dirty sur- 

 faces, and from the skin. The utility of inflammation and 



