Immunity

How Elie Metchnikoff Changed the Course of Modern Medicine

Luba Vikhanski, Luba Vikhanski

• Publisher: Chicago Review Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781613731130
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Tecnología e ingeniería
• Subtopic: Biografías de ciencia y tecnología

Around Christmas of 1882, while peering through a microscope at starfish larvae in which he had inserted tiny thorns, Russian zoologist Elie Metchnikoff had a brilliant insight: what if the mobile cells he saw gathering around the thorns were nothing but a healing force in action? Metchnikoff's daring theory of immunity—that voracious cells he called phagocytes formed the first line of defense against invading bacteria—would eventually earn the scientist a Nobel Prize, shared with his archrival, as well as the unofficial moniker "Father of Natural Immunity." But first he had to win over skeptics, especially those who called his theory "an oriental fairy tale." Using previously inaccessible archival materials, author Luba Vikhanski chronicles Metchnikoff's remarkable life and discoveries in the first moder n biography of this hero of medicine. Metchnikoff was a towering figure in the scientific community of the early twentieth century, a tireless humanitarian who, while working at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, also strived to curb the spread of cholera, syphilis, and other deadly diseases. In his later years, he startled the world with controversial theories on longevity, launching a global craze for yogurt, and pioneered research into gut microbes and aging. Though Metchnikoff was largely forgotten for nearly a hundred years, Vikhanski documents a remarkable revival of interest in his ideas on immunity and on the gut flora in the science of the twenty-first century.

NOTES

Olga Metchnikoff’s Zhizn’ Il’i Il’icha Mechnikova (Life of Elie Metchnikoff) was often my source of information even when not directly cited. I used the Russian edition since that was the language of Olga’s original manuscript. It was ready for publication in 1917, but because of the October revolution, the French version appeared first, in 1920, the English in 1921, and the Russian only in 1926.

When quoting Metchnikoff’s books, I used the Russian or French versions, since translations into English, a language he knew less well, contain errors. For example, the English translation of Immunity in Infective Diseases states that he lectured at the 1890 Congress in Berlin, which he did not attend. All the translations from Russian, French, and German are mine; some of the German sources are cited from publications in Russian or English, as indicated.

In these notes, I use the Library of Congress transliteration system for Russian, but throughout the book, I provide phonetic spellings and spell well-known Russian names in their more familiar form—for example, Ilya rather than Il’ia and Tolstoy rather than Tolstoi.

Descriptions of weather in Paris are from Le Figaro, which in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century published daily reports on yesterday’s weather.

FREQUENTLY CITED NAMES AND SOURCES

EM: Elie Metchnikoff

OM: Olga Metchnikoff

ASS: I. I. Mechnikov. Akademicheskoe sobranie sochinenii, 16 volumes. Moscow: Medgiz, 1950–1964.

Annales: Annales de l’Institut Pasteur.

Letters 1: I. I. Mechnikov. Pis’ma k Ol’ge Mechnikovoi, 1876–1899. Edited by A. E. Gaisinovich and B. V. Levshin. Moscow: Nauka, 1978.

Letters 2: I. I. Mechnikov. Pis’ma k Ol’ge Mechnikovoi, 1900–1914. Edited by A. E. Gaisinovich and B. V. Levshin. Moscow: Nauka, 1980.

SV: I. I. Mechnikov. Stranitsy vospominanii. Moscow: USSR Academy of Sciences, 1946.

ZIIM: O. N. Mechnikova. Zhizn’ Il’i Il’icha Mechnikova. Moscow-Leningrad: Gosizdat, 1926.

ARCHIVES

AIP: Archives de l’Institut Pasteur, Paris

AIMR: Archives institutionnelles du musée Rodin, Paris

ARAN: Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk, Moscow

DAHO: Derzhavnii Arkhiv Kharkivskoi Oblasti, Kharkov

DAKO: Derzhavnii Arkhiv Kievskoii Oblasti, Kiev

GARF: Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii, Moscow

RAC: Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, NY

RGASPI: Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsial’no-Politicheskoi Istorii, Moscow

RGIA: Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Istoricheskii Arkhiv, St. Petersburg

Saada Collection: The personal archive of Jacques Saada

The Waller Manuscript Collection, Uppsala University Library

Waldemar Mordechai Haffkine archive, National Library of Israel, Jerusalem

PART I: MY METCHNIKOFF

Chapter 1: Reversal of Fortune

the term gerontology: History professor W. Andrew Achenbaum, author of Crossing Frontiers: Gerontology Emerges as a Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), has confirmed that Metchnikoff’s use of gerontology was the first coinage of this term he had found (e-mail to author, August 17, 2010).

In a 1911 poll: “Who Are the Ten,” Strand Magazine.

“Remember your promise”: ZIIM, 218.

“a model of selfless service”: Berkhin and Fedosov, Istoriia SSSR, 105.

“Leninism, the highest achievement”: Ibid., 104.

authored the modern concept of immunity: Tauber, “The Birth of Immunology, III,” 522; Tauber and Chernyak, Metchnikoff and the Origins, 135.

“an oriental fairy tale”: EM, “Geschichte,” repr., ASS, vol. 7, 504.

Chapter 2: The Paris Obsession

Lili had been “widely regarded”: The first to mention this in print was Cavaillon, “The Historical Milestones,” 414.

“He told it to you like a secret”: Annick Perrot, interview with author, December 13, 2012.

“Biographies of great people should not cover up”: EM, Osnovateli, repr., ASS, vol. 14, 226.

PART II: THE MESSINA “EPIPHANY”

Chapter 3: Eureka!

“Overall, Messina hardly stands out”: EM, “Moe prebyvanie v Messine,” repr., SV, 71.

had their greatest insights: See, for example, Johnson, Where Good Ideas, 108–13.

“It struck me that”: SV, 74.

“Sensing that my hunch”: Ibid.

“No sooner said than done”: Ibid., 75.

the very beginning of 1883: The Metchnikoffs might have celebrated Christmas on January 6, according to the Russian Old Style calendar.

“Naturally, I was agitated”: SV, 75.

Darwin had been right: For the development of Metchnikoff’s views on Darwinism, see Alfred I. Tauber, “Introduction,” in Gourko, Williamson, and Tauber, The Evolutionary Biology Papers, 1–21; Tauber and Chernyak, Metchnikoff and the Origins, 68–100; and Ghiselin and Groeben, “Elias Metschnikoff.”

“Until then a zoologist, I suddenly became”: SV, 75.

“It was like that blinding light”: de Kruif, Microbe Hunters, 206.

In truth, his searches: EM’s embryology research as a foundation for his phagocyte theory is analyzed in Tauber and Chernyak, Metchnikoff and the Origins, 25...