Hi Obituary Notices of Fellows deceased. 



enormous importance to the life and health — " the well-being " — of mankind. 

 He had become familiar with the food-ingesting amceba-like cells in the 

 blood and tissues of minute transparent animals — so minute and so 

 transparent that he could watch them in life, with a powerful microscope, 

 without damaging or interfering with their activities. He saw, in a flash of 

 prophetic insight, the significance of these " eater-cells," or " phagocytes," as 

 he named them. His knowledge and training in the sciences of chemistry, 

 physiology, anatomy, and pathology enabled him to guess correctly that it 

 was their business to engulf and destroy noxious intrusive particles which 

 might find their way into the animal of which they formed part, and, above 

 all, to attack and destroy those agents of infective disease, the bacteria and 

 other microbes, which had been but recently recognised, owing, in the first 

 place, to the work of Pasteur, as the specific causes of a whole series of 

 deadly maladies. Thus his pleasant tentative explorations in microscopic 

 zoology were arrested. He had found a great treasure. It was not one 

 which would enrich him — for that he had no ambition. But it would, he 

 foresaw, in all probability prove to be of vast service to his fellow-men. It 

 became his duty, and no less his pleasure, to devote himself to the securing 

 and safe delivery of this great treasure, and all that it carried with it, to the 

 world of men. In this spirit, and with splendid success, he devoted the rest 

 of his life, untiringly, to the foundation and elaboration of his doctrine of 

 phagocytosis. 



Elie Metchnikoff was born in 1845 at Ivanavka, near Kharkoff. His father 

 was of Moldavian ancestry and an officer of the Imperial Guard, from which 

 he retired with the rank of major-general. He was devoted to the pursuits 

 of a country gentleman, among which horse-racing was his special favourite. 

 He had no tendencies to scientific study. Elie's mother, whose family name 

 was Nevakovitch, was a Jewess. He owed his mental gifts largely to her. 

 From childhood he showed a strong taste for the study of Nature. After 

 passing through the high school of Kharkoff he entered the university at the 

 age of 17 and completed his degree examinations in two years, when he went 

 off (in 1864) to Germany for further biological training. 



He had already, in 1863, when he was only 18, published a paper in 

 Eeichert's ' Archiv ' on the stalk of Vorticella, and another on the nematode 

 Diplogaster. In 1864 he published some observations on the Acinetarian 

 Sphserophrya. After a brief sojourn in Heligoland he went to work in 

 Leuckart's laboratory at Giessen, and accompanied the professor when the 

 latter was promoted to the Chair of Zoology in the University of Gottingen. 

 In Leuckart's laboratory he worked at the parasite of the frog, Ascaris 

 nigrovenosa, and made the important discovery of the fact that the 

 hermaphrodite parasite of the frog's lung hatched from eggs gives birth 

 viviparously to a free-living generation of males and females. This he 

 published in 1865 in Eeichert's 'Archiv,' and a translation of his paper 

 appeared in the 1 Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science ' in 1866. 

 Leuckart claimed to have made the discovery " with the assistance of 



