446 



NATURE 



[July 27, 1916 



xiins, and bacteriotropins. It must suffice here to 

 state that Metchnikotf successfully established the 

 doctrine that it is to the healthy activity of our 

 phagocytes that we have to look not only for tem- 

 porary protection, but for immunity against the 

 micro-organisms of disease. 



Since 1901 — until he fell ill last winter — Metch- 

 nikoff was incessantly active in his labora- 

 tory, working there from early morning until 

 evening, when he took train to his country house 

 on the heights above the Seine. Rarely would 

 he tear himself away from his absorbing work to 

 enjoy a holiday. He went a few years ago to 

 Astrachan, on the Caspian, to inquire for the 

 iRussian Government into the occurrence of 

 ^bubonic plague in that region, and studied also 

 the incidence of tuberculosis in the town popula- 

 tions and among the Kalmuck Tartars. On the 

 .latter subject he gave (in response to my urgent 

 .request) a valuable lecture in London before the 

 National Health Society (in 1912), and on other 

 •occasions he made short visits to this country, 

 in order to receive honours and deliver special dis- 

 •courses — as at the Darwin celebration at Cam- 

 bridge in 1909. The variety of infective diseases 

 to the experimental investigation of which he 

 turned the resources of his laboratory and his 

 theoretical conceptions is truly astonishing. As 

 late as 191 1 he wrote: "Perhaps before long it 

 will be possible to explain diabetes, gout, and 

 rheumatism by the injurious activity of some 

 "Variety of microbe " (preface to the invaluable 

 volume, "Microbes and Toxins," by Dr. Etienne 

 Burnet, published in London by Heinemann). 



In 1903 he found time to write a profoundly in- 

 teresting popular book, " The Nature of Man " 

 (London : Heinemann), in which, among other 

 things, he discourses of old age, and his view that 

 unhealthy fermentation commonly occurring in 

 the large intestine produces poisons which are 

 absorbed, and lead to deterioration of the tissues 

 of the walls of the arteries, and so to senile 

 changes and unduly early death. He satisfied 

 himself, experimentally and clinically, that the use 

 of " sour milk " as an article of diet checks or 

 altogether arrests this unhealthy fermentation in 

 the intestine by planting there the lactic bacillus 

 which, forming lactic acid, renders the life and 

 growth of the bacteria of those special poisonous 

 fermentations (which cannot flourish in an acid 

 environment) impossible. Hence he himself daily 

 took a pint or so of sour milk, and he recom- 

 mended it to others and arranged for the commer- 

 cial preparation of a particularly pure and agree- 

 able "sour milk," from the sale of which he 

 scrupulously abstained from deriving any pecu- 

 niary profit. This small, though valuable, adven- 

 ture of his in dietetics has been— unfortunately, 

 but perhaps inevitably — the one and only feature 

 of his long career of vast scientific discovery 

 which has impressed itself on the somewhat erra- 

 tic intelligence of the "man in the street." 



Metchnikoff was a foreign member and Copley 

 medallist of the Royal Society, a member of the 

 Institute of France, of the Academy of Sciences 



NO. 2439, VOL. 97] 



of Petrograd, and of many other societies. In 

 1908 he was awarded the Nobel prize for his 

 researches on immunity, and he received only a 

 fortnight before his death the announcement 

 that the Albert Medal of the Society of Arts of 

 London had been this year awarded to him in view 

 of the benefit to humanity of his scientific dis- 

 coveries. 



I cannot close this imperfect survey of the im- 

 pressive and ideally complete career of my friend 

 without some few personal notes. From the day 

 when I met him in Pasteur's laboratory in 1888 

 we became warm friends. He was singularly 

 simple, genuine, and unaffectedly good and 

 unselfish. I could tell a hundred tales of his bene- 

 volence and humane spirit; of the unrecorded 

 charitable aid given by him and his wife to the 

 poor of Paris and to expatriated Russians ; of his 

 exquisite politeness and consideration to all those 

 who were his servants. I am convinced that the 

 devotion of the latter half of his life to the solution 

 of the problems of disease was due to his goodness 

 of heart and his ardent desire to alleviate human 

 suffering. He never was a smoker, and twenty 

 years ago gave up the use of alcohol entirely. 

 He had no taste for sport of any kind, and never 

 indulged in "recreations" or "amusements" or 

 big social functions. He was a devoted lover of 

 music, and had much knowledge of art and many 

 friends in the great art world of Paris. His 

 beard was large and his hair long, and he was 

 thick-set and muscularly strong, though he became 

 more and more bent, as the years went on, by his 

 constant stooping over the microscope. No year 

 passed, after I first knew him, without my spend- 

 ing some time with him and Madame Metchnikoff 

 in Paris or in their home at Sevres, and on several 

 occasions he has stayed with me in London or 

 earlier in Oxford. From time to time he has 

 shown to me the experiments and microscopic evi- 

 dence upon which his own and his pupils' dis- 

 coveries were based, and has put before me the 

 preliminary hypotheses by aid of which he was 

 seeking — as opportunity offered — to arrive at 

 further knowledge of appendicitis, syphilis, the 

 yaws, infantile paralysis, green diarrhoea, cholera, 

 tubercle, cancer, diabetes, gout, and rheumatism. 

 Only three years ago he carried out some new 

 researches on a zoological subject — the natural 

 removal of black pigment from the wing-feathers 

 of gulls — which he proposed to publish in the 

 Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science. But 

 the terrible events of the last two years put such 

 work out of his power. In his last moments he 

 insisted very urgently that an immediate autopsy 

 should follow his death. He had suffered for six 

 months frjom 'pneumonia, pleurisy, and latterly 

 bronchitis. The autopsy showed atheroma of the 

 aorta and related cardiac disease. Metchnikoff 

 died in the apartments of the Institut which had 

 been assigned as a dwelling to Pasteur. Accord- 

 ing to his wish, his remains have been incinerated, 

 and the urn containing his ashes will be placed in 

 the library of the Pasteur Institute. 



E. Ray Lankester. 



