74 LIFE OF ELIE METCHNIKOFF 



to the patient, and MetchnikofE had to take her away. 

 They went to Kussia to stay with her parents and then 

 to Panassovka. The doctors having advised a course 

 of treatment by " koumiss," or fermented mare's 

 milk prepared in a special way by the Tartars, Elie 

 engaged a Tartar servant specially for that purpose, 

 but in vain. In spite of every treatment, his wife's 

 health was steadily growing worse. The cold at St. 

 Vaast had been followed by such a dry heat in Russia 

 that, in order to procure a little coolness for the 

 patient, they had to spread wet sheets around her. 

 She constantly had high temperatures and frequent 

 attacks of haemorrhage. It was obvious that she 

 must leave Russia, and Metchnikoff, obliged to rejoin 

 his post at Odessa, asked Mile. Fedorovitch to go 

 with her to Montreux. 



The separation was all the harder that aU. hope of 

 recovery was beginning to wane. The patient, how- 

 ever, had been told of the magical effect of Madeira 

 in cases of tuberculosis, and she chmg to the idea as 

 to a plank of safety. Elie resolved to take her there. 

 He set to work with renewed ardour in order to obtain 

 the sum necessary for the journey ; in spite of all his 

 self-denial, his normal resources would not have 

 sufficed, and he had recourse to translations and 

 literary articles. He had a theme ready, which he 

 developed in a paper called Education from the Anihro- 

 pological Point of View — ^in fact a preliminary sketch 

 of his ideas on the disharmonies in human nature. 

 In it, he analysed the disharmonies due to the great 

 difference of development between the child and the 

 adult : whilst the young of animals are very rapidly 

 able to imitate the adults and to live like them, the 

 man-child is incapable of it. His brain, especially in 



