Immunity How Elie Metchnikoff

Changed the Course of Modern

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 I M M U N I T Y
HOW

ELIE METCHNIKOFF
CHANGED THE COURSE OF

MODERN MEDICINE

L U B A V I K H A N S K I

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 Copyright © 2016 by Luba Vikhanski
All rights reserved
First edition
Published by Chicago Review Press Incorporated
814 North Franklin Street
Chicago, Illinois 60610
ISBN 978‑1-­61373‑110‑9

Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data

Names: Vikhanski, Luba, author.
Title: Immunity : how Elie Metchnikoff changed the course of modern
medicine
/ Luba Vikhanski.
Other titles: How Elie Metchnikoff changed the course of modern medicine
Description: First edition. | Chicago, Illinois : Chicago Review Press
Incorporated, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015050225 | ISBN 9781613731109 (alk. paper)
Subjects: | MESH: Metchnikoff, Elie, 1845-1916. | Allergy and Immunology |
Microbiology | Immune System Phenomena | Ukraine | France | Biography
Classification: LCC RC584 | NLM WZ 100 | DDC 616.97--dc23 LC record
available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015050225

Typesetting: Nord Compo

Printed in the United States of America

54321

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 To my mother and the memory of my father

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 The scientist must concern himself with what one will
say about him in a century, rather than with current
insults or compliments.
—Louis Pasteur, in a letter to Adolphe Guéroult, editor
in chief of L’Opinion Nationale, July 19, 1864

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 CONTENTS

A Note About Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

I My Metchnikoff

1 Reversal of Fortune. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2 The Paris Obsession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

II The Messina “Epiphany”

3 Eureka! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4 A Boy in a Hurry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5 Science and Marriage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
6 A Person of Extreme Convictions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
7 The True Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
8 An Outsider’s Advantage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
9 Eating Cells . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
10 Curative Digestion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
11 The Pasteur Boom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
12 An Oriental Fairy Tale. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
13 A Fateful Detour. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
14 Farewell. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

III The Immunity War

15 The Temple on Rue Dutot. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

16 Engine in the Dark. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
17 An Amazing Friend. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

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 18 Verdict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
19 The Soul of Inflammation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
20 Under the Sword of Damocles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
21 Law of Life. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
22 Building a Better Castle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
23 The Demon of Science. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
24 Kicking Against the Goads. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
25 A Romantic Chapter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

IV Not by Yogurt Alone

26 Haunted. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
27 Vive la Vie!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
28 Law of Longevity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
29 The Nature of Man. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
30 Papa Boiled. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
31 The Butter-­Milk Craze. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
32 A True Malady. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
33 Absurd Prejudice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
34 Return of a Psychosis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
35 Biological Romances. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
36 Mais C’est Metchnikoff!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .196
37 Triumphant Tour. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
38 Two Monarchs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
39 A Metchnikoff Cow. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
40 Rational Worldview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
41 The Last War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
42 A True Benefactor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
43 Olga’s Crime. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
44 Vanishing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234

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 V Legacy

45 Metchnikoff’s Life. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243

46 Metchnikoff’s Policemen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
47 Ultimate Closure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
48 Living to 150. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259

Acknowledgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265

Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317

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 A NOTE ABOUT NAMES

The various names Ilya Ilyich Metchnikoff used outside his native
Russia reflect the adjustments people inevitably make when reaching
out to foreign audiences or adapting themselves to new countries.
When he published his papers abroad, and later when he left Rus‑
sia, he changed his first name, Ilya, to that by which his namesake
prophet—Elijah in the English-­speaking world—went in each particular
country: Elias in Germany and Elie in France. He wrote his last name so
that it would be pronounced as close as possible to the original Russian:
Mecznikow, Metschnikoff, and finally Metchnikoff, as spelled in France,
where he ultimately settled. Mechnikov, the standard transliteration of
his last name, reflects its Russian spelling but not the pronunciation;
the -­ov endings of Russian names sound more like -­off.
The numerous variations have occasionally resulted in a lack of
consistency even within a single organization. His Nobel Prize diploma,
for example, states his name as Elie Metchnikoff, but the official Nobel
Prize website lists him as Ilya Mechnikov.
I refer to him as Ilya during his earlier years, but when writing about
his later life, I’ve chosen to use the first and last names he ultimately
adopted outside Russia: Elie Metchnikoff. In France, his first name is
spelled Élie, but in English-­language publications, it has always been
spelled without the acute accent, as it is in this book.

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 I

MY METCHNIKOFF

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 1

REVERSAL OF FORTUNE

On July 15, 1916, the weather in Paris was overcast and oppressively
humid. Bleak light poured through the metal-­framed windows of Louis
Pasteur’s former apartment upon gold-­patterned wallpaper, oriental
rugs, and carved antique furniture. The museum-­like residence at the
Pasteur Institute was filled with oil paintings, vases, statuettes, and other
works of art Pasteur had received as gifts from grateful admirers. As
Elie Metchnikoff lay in this shrine of science, pillows propping his
large head with its mane of gray hair and beard, he held the hand
of his wife Olga, fifty-­seven, a slim, oval-­faced blonde sitting at his
bedside. He had devoted his entire life to science. Now science was
letting him down.
Metchnikoff knew he was dying, but his worst fear was not death
itself. What he dreaded most was that his passing away at seventy-­one,
decades too early by his own standards, would discredit his theories
about life, health, and longevity.
He had been much better at creating new areas of research than
at fitting into existing ones. The 1908 Nobel Prize in Physiology or
Medicine had been his reward for helping found the modern science
of immunity. He had then launched the first systematic study of aging,
coining the term gerontology. In future generations, he argued, people
could live to 150. To stay healthy, he believed they had to repopulate
their intestines with beneficial microbes to replace harmful ones—for
instance, by eating yogurt or other forms of sour milk.

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 3

EUREKA!

In October 1882, Odessa zoologist Metchnikoff embarked on a life-­

altering research trip to Italy, arriving in the busy port of Messina at
the foot of rocky Sicilian hills. Not yet as disheveled as in his later
descriptions, his long hair combed straight back, away from his thin-­
rimmed spectacles, he was accompanied by his wife Olga and a brood
of five of her siblings, a becoming entourage for a man used to taking
his loved ones and others under his wing.
Upon sailing into the harbor, they saw a dirty quay encumbered
with wooden boxes of oranges and other wares. The buildings lining
the quay were also neglected and disharmonious. “Overall, Messina
hardly stands out in terms of scenery, but its surroundings are highly
picturesque,” Metchnikoff was to recall years later in an essay about
Messina in the newspaper Russkie Vedomosti. He and his retinue pro‑
ceeded to these surroundings by carriage, traveling north along the
coast to the suburban community of Ringo outside the ancient walls
of Messina. They rented a small seaside cottage with a panoramic view
of the bright blue Messina Strait, confined on the other side by the
verdant slopes of Calabria at the southernmost tip of continental Italy.
The mirrorlike flatness of the sea offered just the respite Metchnikoff
needed. And he had only to cross the quay to find fishermen who
could supply him with marine organisms for study.
Actually, he would have preferred to be in Naples, where in his
early youth he had ventured at dawn on zoological excursions into the

15

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