A book from the father of Probiotics and Nobel Prize Winner in Medicine, Elie Metchnikoff. An excerpt from a review in "The Saturday Review," [1907] The doctrine of phagocytosis which will always remain linked with the name of Metchnikoff, was the fruit of observations upon comparative biology. It is strange that detached researches upon the life-processes of minute marine organisms should revolutionise medicine, but the width of bearing to be allowed to scientific data is notoriously indefinable, as was well ...
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A book from the father of Probiotics and Nobel Prize Winner in Medicine, Elie Metchnikoff. An excerpt from a review in "The Saturday Review," [1907] The doctrine of phagocytosis which will always remain linked with the name of Metchnikoff, was the fruit of observations upon comparative biology. It is strange that detached researches upon the life-processes of minute marine organisms should revolutionise medicine, but the width of bearing to be allowed to scientific data is notoriously indefinable, as was well demonstrated by the case in point. At the time of Metchnikoff's great discovery microscopists had already established the anatomical facts of inflammation, such as the determination of blood to the menaced area, and the large accumulation there of the motile white cells of the blood. But not until Metchnikoff indicated the capacity of these cells to envelope and digest offending particles of foreign matter was the true significance of the inflammatory reaction brought to light. In the transparent larvae of star-fish he observed that the introduction of a thorn resulted in an accumulation of motile cells around the intruder. Here in a transparent organism, possessing neither blood-vessels nor nervous system, was to be seen in replica, mutatis mutandis, the anatomical picture of inflammation as it occurs in vertebrates. Plainly then, this cellular accumulation was a fundamental factor in the vital response of living structures to injury.... Upon such facts he founded the theory that in this process, to which he gave the name phagocytosis, lay the chief weapon of self-defence wielded by the living organism. The theory met with widespread opposition, and when it was discovered that the blood serum of animals immunised against the cholera bacillus was capable of destroying this bacillus in vitro, apparently without any cellular intervention whatever, the phagocytic basis of immunity seemed threatened to its foundations. Opinions veered towards a humoral explanation which credited the defensive properties of the immune organism to the body fluids. But Metchnikoff was far from being defeated. He proved that the injection of bacilli in this experiment produced a temporary destruction of white blood cells and the release of certain digestive substances, allied to the digestive ferments of the alimentary system and normally enclosed within these cells. When, by an ingenious manoeuvre, this preliminary destruction was avoided, the fluids of the immune body remained quite inert against the injected bacteria. Cellular intervention has thus again claimed a paramount position in the mechanism of immunity. No one can read this book without being impressed by the dispassionate and judicial attitude of the author. Although it is in a sense an apologia, one feels that the writer is recording a balanced survey of his labours of twenty-five strenuous years, and the impression left by the work is correspondingly convincing. We cannot do better than reproduce in his own words his final conclusions. "There is only one constant element in immunity, whether innate or acquired, and that is phagocytosis ... It is clearly proved that phagocytes are susceptible cells which react against morbific agents, whether organised or not. These cells ingest microorganisms and absorb soluble substances. They seize microbes whilst these are still living and capable of exercising their noxious effect, and bring them under the action of their cellular contents, which are capable of killing and digesting these micro-organisms, or of inhibiting their pathogenic action. Phagocytes act because they possess vital properties and a faculty of exerting a fermentative action on morbific agents." The book is a classic, and we owe the translator a heavy debt for making it an English one. We can give him no higher praise than by affirming that there is nothing in the diction of the text to suggest its alien origin."
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