LIFE OF ELIE METCHNIKOFF 251 



My comparative longevity is not due to family heredity 

 (my father died in his 68th year, my mother in her 66th, my 

 sister also, my eldest brother at 45, my second brother at 50, 

 the third in his 57th year ; my grandparents I have not known). 

 It is to my hygiene that I give the credit for having attained 

 my 70 years in a satisfactory condition. I have taken no raw 

 food for eighteen years and I introduce as many lactic bacilli 

 as possible into my intestines. But it is but a first step ; in 

 spite of all, I am being poisoned by the bacteria of butyric 

 fermentation. However, I have practically reached the normal 

 term of life and I must be satisfied. I have, so to speak, 

 accomplished the program me of a " reduced orthobiosis." 



When macrobiotics become more perfect, when people have 

 learnt how to cultivate a suitable flora in the intestines of 

 children as soon as they are weaned from their mother's 

 breast, the normal limit of life will be put much further back 

 and may extend to twice my 70 years. Then, also, satiety 

 with existence will appear much later than it has done in 

 my case. 



To-day they celebrated my jubilee at the Pasteur Institute, 

 which touched me very much, in spite of my distrust of senti- 

 mental manifestations, for I realised their sincerity. I should 

 have liked to set out a programme of the researches which 

 should be accomplished by the Pasteur Institute, but I feared 

 to detain my audience too long. 



I believe that Science will solve all the principal problems 

 of Life and Death and that she will enable human beings to 

 accomplish their vital cycle by real orthobiosis, not by a 

 reduced caricature of it as in my case. Nevertheless, I con- 

 sider the experiment practised upon myself as having already 

 given some result and that is to me a real satisfaction. 



We spent that summer a few weeks at Norka, 

 where Metchnikofl completed his researches con- 

 cerning the death of the silk-worm moth. 



We went for delicious walks ; we spent all the 

 afternoon by the lake or under the pines in the 

 heather, reading and working. Once only, during a 



