ÉLIE METCHNIKOFF
Ever since the attempt has been made to discover a rational
basis of morality, human nature, regarded essentially as
good, has been taken as that basis. Religions and systems
of philosophy, on the other hand, which have tried to find
another foundation for morality, have regarded human nature
as vicious at the roots. Science has been able to tell us
that man, the descendant of animals, has good and evil
qualities in his nature, and that his life is made unhappy
by the evil qualities. But the constitution of man is not
immutable, and perhaps it may be changed for the better.
Morality should be based not on human nature in its existing
vitiated condition, but on human nature, ideal, as it
may be in the future. Before all things, it is necessary
to try to amend the evolution of the human life, that
is to say, to transform its disharmonies into harmonies
(Orthobiosis). This task can be undertaken only by science,
and to science the opportunity of accomplishing it must be
given.--Metchnikoff's "The Nature of Man", p. 288.
If Carlyle were writing now his "Heroes and Hero-Worship", he would
have to add--however much he would have disliked to--a chapter on
"The Hero as Scientist." For the popular ideal of greatness has been
decidedly changed in the last half-century, and new standards of
heroism have been established. Creative genius is beginning to take
rank above destructive, and men are coming to recognize that the
heroism of those who save life may be quite as great and is certainly
more admirable than the heroism that is measured by a monument of
skulls. A striking proof of this shifting of public appreciation is
afforded by the referendum carried out by the _Petit Parisien_ a few
years ago to ascertain whom the French people regarded as the greatest
names their country had produced during the nineteenth century.
Fifteen million answers were sent in, so the result may be taken as
representing the consensus of opinion in a larger degree than such
newspaper _plebiscites_ generally do. It was to be expected that the
name of Napoleon would head such a list. It would have in almost any
other country except France. But France, always devoted to the cult
of _La Gloire_ and hitherto chiefly captivated by the bellicose form
of it; France, where every man is trained in the army and educated in
schools established with the avowed purpose of increasing the military
strength of the nation; France ranks Napoleon fourth in the list of
eminent men and puts at the head of it the name of a modest chemist
and physiologist, Louis Pasteur.[1] It is a common observation that
new ideas and social tendencies are apt to become manifest in France
earlier than elsewhere. The French clock seems to be fast, always
keeping a bit ahead of mean European time. If so, we may expect that
before long other countries may come to give due honor and, what is
more important, due opportunity and encouragement to the scientists,
inventors, and authors who confer glory upon their country by
benefiting the whole world.
The worthy successor of Pasteur as Director of the Institute he founded
is the subject of this sketch, Élie Metchnikoff. The foremost of
French medical men, he was neither born a Frenchman nor trained as a
physician. Like Pasteur, he entered the realm of medicine by crossing
the frontier of another science. Any man who pursues a straight line
of thought will find that it leads him across many of those imaginary
lines which have been drawn between the sciences, just as an aviator
crossing Europe in an air line pays no attention to the artificial
and historic boundaries which divide state from state. Pasteur was a
chemist, an inorganic chemist at that, and he was running down the
cause of asymmetry in crystals when he found himself over in the field
of biology. He had been engaged in separating the leftward skewed
crystals of tartaric acid from those that skewed to the right by
picking them out of the mixture by hand, but he discovered that he
could throw the burden of selection off on an agency whose time was
less valuable, namely, the yeast plant, which has an appetite for one
kind of crystals, but disdains the other. This led him to the germ
theory of life and of disease and enabled him to save millions annually
to the farmer and stockraiser and unnumbered human lives.
[Illustration: Élie Metchnikoff]
Metchnikoff's experience was similar. He was as a zoölogist less
interested in man than in the invertebrates, devoting his time to the
study of the minuter forms of life on the barren steppes of Russia and
in Mediterranean waters. It was in Italy at Messina in 1882 that he
made the discovery which led him to fame as one of the benefactors of
the human race. Now, if a man should deliberately set out for such a
goal, if he should be incited by egotism to become famous, or inspired
by altruism to relieve the suffering of humanity, about the last thing
he would try would be to sit down in a laboratory all day with his eye
glued to a microscope watching the blood corpuscles chase each other
through the veins of an infant starfish. But since Metchnikoff was
less influenced by the two motives mentioned than he was by a desire
for truth for its own sake and regardless of consequences, all these
things have been added unto him. If the anti-vivisectionists had their
way about it, experimentation in animals, if allowed at all, would be
restricted to physicians and to the specific purpose of curing disease.
This, however, would be one of the surest ways to check medical
progress, for the advancement of a science ordinarily owes little to
those who are professionally engaged in its practice or have their eyes
focused upon some practical result of their investigations. At least
the world may rejoice that through the liberality of French law the
work of these two men has never been hampered--Pasteur, who discovered
the cause of disease, and Metchnikoff, who discovered the cause of
immunity. These are two cornerstones of the foundation on which is
now being erected the structure of a rational system of hygiene the
purpose of which is to prolong human life by the elimination of
disease rather than by its cure. The change that is taking place in
medicine is analogous to that taking place in philanthropy. The modern
philanthropist appears cold-hearted because, instead of dropping a coin
into a beggar's hat, as did the charitable in former days, he devotes
himself to a systematic study of the causes of poverty. The modern
medical man is likewise misunderstood if he seems indifferent to the
suffering around him and is absorbed in the investigation of remote
biological problems having no perceptible relation to human needs. But
the beneficial results of the scientific method in both philanthropy
and medicine are already sufficiently apparent to enable us to see that
it will do much more for humanity than the kind but blind benevolence
of the past.
The fame of France in art, literature, and science is in large part her
reward for her hospitality in giving to men of other lands the freedom
and encouragement which they could not find at home. One example is
Maeterlinck. Another is Metchnikoff. He left his native country chiefly
because of a difference of opinion on political questions between
himself and the Czar. Not that he has ever been a revolutionist, but as
a Jew by race, an atheist in religion, and a liberal in politics, he
was triply obnoxious to the powers that be, and after the assassination
of Alexander II in 1881, the students were too much excited over
politics to attend to their studies. So he resigned his professorship
in the University of Odessa and went abroad to devote himself to
biological research.
He was born in the Province of Kharkov, Little Russia, May 15, 1845.
His father was an officer of the Guards, afterward a general. His
mother was a Jewess, and it was from her that he derived the love for
science which early manifested itself. He won a gold medal in the high
school of Kharkov and passed through the university of that city in
two years instead of the customary four. Then he went to Germany and
studied at Giessen, Göttingen, and Munich. Returning to his native
land, he taught in the University of St. Petersburg and in 1870 went to
Odessa to take the chair of zoölogy in the university there.
The years spent in private study, chiefly at Messina, the earthquake
city of Sicily, were most fruitful, for his investigation of
intercellular digestion in minute marine invertebrates gave him the
clew to the protective action of the blood in the higher animals and
man, and in 1884 he outlined his theory of inflammation, which was, in
short, that the congestion of blood at a wound was due to the efforts
of the leucocytes or white blood cells to overpower the invading
microbes. The value of this discovery was recognized immediately by
the two foremost authorities in biology: Virchow, the German, who
had discovered the leucocytes, and Pasteur, the Frenchman, who had
discovered the microbes. Metchnikoff had now found the missing link
which brought these two discoveries together and showed their meaning.
In 1888 Metchnikoff was called to the Pasteur Institute, and in 1895
became its director. Here he found an exceptional opportunity to devote
his talents to the relief of suffering humanity. Such institutions
for the advancement of the science of medicine have since been
established elsewhere: the Institute for Experimental Therapeutics
in Frankfort-on-the-Main, the Cancer Research Laboratory of London,
the Rockefeller Institute in New York, for example; but the French
people were the first to respond to the need of the man they have
delighted to honor by endowing, in 1886, an institution which should
continue his work as well as perpetuate his name. The Nobel prize for
the most important discovery in medicine was in 1908 divided between
Metchnikoff, of the Pasteur Institute, and Professor Paul Ehrlich, of
the Frankfort Institute, who has in these latter days made "606" the
mark of the beast, instead of 666, as prophesied in Revelation. The
Nobel prize man of 1912, Doctor Alexis Carrel, although a Frenchman by
birth, found in the Rockefeller Institute the opportunity to carry on
his remarkable investigations on the preservation and transplantation
of living tissues.
Characteristically French is the artistic setting which has been
given to this home of science. The visitor appropriately approaches
it through the long and handsome Boulevard Pasteur, then turning into
a side street he finds on his left the Pasteur Institute and on his
right the more imposing buildings of the Institute for Infectious
Diseases and the Laboratory of Biological Chemistry, recently erected
for carrying out the treatment which the experimental work of the other
side of the street has suggested. A new department has been added for
the study of tropical diseases such as the sleeping sickness, which has
depopulated a large part of the Nyanza region. This extension of the
work is made possible by the receipt in 1909 of the bequest of eight
million dollars by the miserly and eccentric Jewish banker who called
himself Osiris.
As the visitor passes into the courtyard of the Institute, his nerves
already shaky with thoughts of microbes and mad dogs, he is almost
startled to see, half hidden among the trees, a man engaged in a death
struggle with a wolf. This is a bronze statue of Jupile, a shepherd
who, bitten by a mad wolf, was one of the first patients to receive
the Pasteur treatment for rabies. In a crypt of marble and mosaic
underneath the building is the tomb of Pasteur, as impressive, if less
imposing, than the tomb of Napoleon under the dome of the Invalides not
far away. The reception room of the Institute is adorned with large
paintings showing the modern miracles of healing, better authenticated
than those of Sainte Geneviève depicted by Puvis de Chavannes on the
walls of the Panthéon.
Professor Metchnikoff is ordinarily not accessible to visitors,
especially interviewers, but since I was armed with a letter of
introduction from Professor Jacques Loeb, of the Rockefeller Institute,
whom he regards as the foremost of American scientists, I was fortunate
enough to find him in.
He has rather a short figure and a large head, with a bushy gray beard,
but hair that is still dark. His spectacles are not sufficient to
impart severity to his mild blue eyes. His voice is low and pleasant,
and he speaks, as he moves, without either hurry or hesitation. He is a
worker among workers, inspiring with his indefatigable zeal the young
men who come to him from Europe, America, and Asia to pursue their
researches in bacteriology.
A walk through the Pasteur Institute is like a visit to a zoölogical
garden, for the study of each particular human disease requires the
discovery of some species that is also susceptible to it. Here are not
only the dogs, guinea pigs, and rats common to every bacteriological
laboratory, but also many others closely connected with Metchnikoff's
special interests; parrots and geese, for example, which are remarkable
for their longevity; bats, which eat rotten food and yet maintain an
aseptic intestinal tract; and chimpanzees, which, as the literal blood
relations of man, are capable of sharing the worst of his diseases.
Like Agassiz, Metchnikoff has "no time to get rich." At his home
in the suburbs of Paris he sets an example of the plain living he
advocates, supplementing the meager salary given him at the Institute
by the income of a small estate in Russia. The twenty thousand dollars
he received from the Nobel Foundation he devoted entirely to the
furtherance of his researches in longevity.
M. Metchnikoff has given the best possible proof that he has no
personal aversion to women who enter his profession, for he married in
1875 as his second wife a Russian bacteriologist of distinction. He
dedicated to her his first volume of "Optimistic Studies," and in it he
cites her experiments on the growth of microbe-free tadpoles. She is an
artist as well as a scientist, and here, too, M. Metchnikoff shares her
tastes, for he is fond of painting and music. They have no children,
but he has a godchild to whom he is devoted.
His high regard for individuality leads him to look with favor upon the
entrance of women into the universities and the professions. He has
no fear that it will result in the production of a class of celibates
corresponding to the sexless workers of the beehive. On the contrary,
his observation of the feminist movement for more than forty years has
shown him that learned ladies are by no means wanting in the marital
and maternal instincts common and proper to their sex. Of a thousand
women in the St. Petersburg Medical School, ten per cent had been
married before, and forty-four per cent were married during their
course of study. A conspicuous case of feminine scientific genius is
that of Sonya Kovalevsky, who attained the highest eminence in that
field which, by the common consent of men, was formerly regarded as
unattainable by women; that is, pure mathematics. But the day when she
received the doubled prize of the French Academy of Sciences she wrote
to a friend that she had never felt so unhappy, and the cause of her
unhappiness, as revealed in her letters and romances, was that she was
not beloved as other women were.
Although Metchnikoff would grant to women every opportunity for the
exercise of their talents, and thinks they had better occupy themselves
with science than with fashions, he believes genius of a high order
to be much rarer among them than among men. When he was called upon
by the women doctors and scientists at the Naturalists' Congress at
St. Petersburg for his opinion of the feminist movement, he created
considerable consternation among them by the following frank language:
Your complaint, as I understand it, is that man has
excluded woman from all higher intellectual occupation by
unnatural means, so that her mind has become atrophied, her
capabilities blunted, her talents stagnant. You would remedy
all this by being made man's equal in politics. You would
then, you say, develop your slumbering abilities, overtake,
and possibly surpass, your immemorial enslaver--man.
But do you really need this political equality in order to
attain this supremacy? Has the down-trodden among men ever
needed it? His political equality has come as an effect not
as the cause of his intellectual development. The mind that
dominates in the artistic and scientific world ultimately
arrives at political supremacy.
But what art or science has man closed to you? You are
here; but really, ladies, I have failed to discover a
Bichat, a Louis, a Jenner, or a Pasteur among you. Have you
personally been impeded in your careers more than certain
individuals among men? Now let us take the arts. Is there a
man-master so unnatural who ever forbade his female slave
to express herself in music? But where are your Beethovens,
your Wagners, your Verdis, your Brahms? I beg of you, dear
ladies, if you remember one, tell me.
What brutal slave owner at any time forbade women to
beautify canvas with satisfying hues and lines depicting
life or nature? As in music, man has encouraged women to do
these things, yet where are your Raphaels, your Leonardos,
your Rubenses? Have women been forbidden to mold, carve, or
draw? Yet where is your Phidias, your Michelangelo, your
Cellini? Did you ever hear of a woman architect?
Home and motherhood there, of course, the most radical
among you will not say that man has attempted to restrain
you--there you have had from time immemorial, in all ages,
in all places, under every condition, absolute and full
freedom. Still, is it not man, the enslaver, who teaches you
domestic economy? Is it not from man that you have learned
how to care for your offspring in illness, how to amuse them
in health? Who discovered the laws of domestic hygiene? Was
it a woman?
Now, my dear ladies, has man ever excluded you from the
kitchen? No, you say, you have been enslaved there. "Cook!
Feed the brute!" is eternally dinned in your ears. It would
seem reasonable that at least in this sphere woman should
have reached a high standard of perfection. And the actual
result? Ah, dear ladies, I must confess. If I want a really
good dinner I must have recourse to a chef.
And now, ladies, I ask your pardon, you have all studied
physiology and psychology, and you know where such
considerations would lead me. But one word more: Do not lose
sight of the significance of your request, "Professor, what
is your opinion of the feministic movement?" for that makes
out your case perfectly--to advocate your cause you would
call in the help of man.
Metchnikoff has very little liking for the political methods in vogue
in our republics. He thinks young men too reckless, opinionated, and
pessimistic to be intrusted with the ballot at the age of twenty-one.
"It is easily intelligible," he says, "that in the new conditions such
modern idols as universal suffrage, public opinion, and the referendum,
in which the ignorant masses are called upon to decide questions which
demand varied and profound knowledge, will last no longer than the old
idols. The progress of human knowledge will bring about the replacement
of such institutions by others in which applied morality will be
controlled by really competent persons." But he fails to inform us how
these "competent persons" are to be selected and placed in power.
To give an account of the varied researches which Metchnikoff has
carried on or has superintended at the Pasteur Institute is apart
from our purpose and would in any case be impossible here, because it
would involve the recapitulation of a great part of the history of
medical progress for the past quarter century. During this period the
science of medicine has been completely revolutionized, for the use
of traditional and empirical remedies has been largely replaced by
a systematic search for the causes of diseases and the experimental
determination of methods of avoiding or counteracting them. In
general, the change may be characterized as a return to nature. In
the older medicine at its best, a dose of some vegetable or mineral
substance, such as quinine or mercury, comparatively harmless, but
altogether foreign to the body, was administered through the mouth and
in time reaching the blood through the digestive systems, killed off
or paralyzed the disease germ. In modern medicine at its best, some
substance, such as the diphtheria antitoxin, that is already present
in the blood in quantity sufficient under ordinary circumstances to
prevent infection, is reënforced in an emergency by more of the same
substance prepared in the blood of the horse. Or if that cannot be
done, the next best thing is to inject some serum that by a natural
reaction will stimulate the body to prepare in excess its own antitoxin
or excite the phagocytes to greater exertions in overcoming their
enemies. In any case, the object is to induce an artificial immunity as
nearly as possible like the natural immunity of the healthy body.
Phagocytes--that is, "devouring cells"--was the name given by
Metchnikoff to the leucocytes or white cells, which he found
wandering about the body in search of their prey. They lead a sort
of semi-independent life, like the simplest one-celled animal, the
amoeba, and they penetrate to all parts of the body, even squeezing
in between the toughened tissue of the skin and bones. When a cut is
made in the skin they are borne to the breach by the flow of blood and
there pile up and coagulate, forming a new skin to protect the raw
flesh, somewhat as a breach in a rampart is hastily filled in with sand
bags. Not only that, but when the enemy actually gains entrance either
by storming a wound or sneaking in through some unguarded opening,
then the white cells rally to the attack, surrounding and destroying
the invading microbes. If these multiply too rapidly, the phagocyte
reserves are mobilized, new recruits by the million are called out,
until the bodily force is victorious or exhausted. Such a battle we
call a local inflammation, or, if the engagement is general and long
continued, a fever. Under the microscope we may watch the foes engaged
in single combat, the phagocyte devouring the bacillus, a living,
formless mass of protoplasm stretching out extemporized tentacles and
engulfing the rod, globe, or writhing spiral which we may afterward see
slowly digesting in its interior.
To be sure, the operation is not quite so simple as Metchnikoff first
conceived it. A condition is always more complicated than the theory
devised to explain it. The question has been hotly debated and is not
yet settled whether the phagocytes best defend us by their life or by
their death. It appears that as they undergo dissolution they give
up to the blood certain substances which dissolve the disease germs
or neutralize their poisons, and this may be a more important means
of defense than the englobing or engulfing process. Then, too, these
white cells seem at times strangely indifferent to the presence of
their dearest foes, or, perhaps we should say, their favorite food.
There is needed in the blood on such occasions a substance known as
opsonin, which being absorbed by the microbes the phagocytes attack
them with avidity; this opsonin serving as some biologist, doubtless an
Englishman, has said, like Worcestershire sauce as an appetizer to the
phagocytes.
But for further discussion of these questions I must refer the reader
to his family physician, who will take pleasure in repudiating these
vague and fanciful interpretations of mine. He will be able to tell
whether phagocytosis or bacteriolysis is the fashionable mode of
combating disease germs and he will introduce the reader to alexin,
agglutinin, anti-bodies, sidechains, and other interesting and useful
novelties that he contains within him to a greater or less degree, let
us hope a greater.
But these same voracious white blood cells which ordinarily serve as
the defenders of the body may in the period of its weakness become
its worst enemies. This reminds us of the Prætorian Guards who in
the later days of Rome precipitated its decline by attacking the
capital. The phagocytes show an unfortunate predilection for the higher
elements of the human organism and, according to Metchnikoff, the most
distressing symptom of old age, the weakening of the mind, is due to
their devouring the nerve cells. But besides that they play havoc all
through the body; eating up the pigment of the hair and so whitening
it; causing degeneration of the liver and kidneys; robbing the skeleton
of its lime and depositing it in the blood vessels, thus doing double
damage by weakening the bones and hardening the arteries. In these
symptoms of senility the germs of disease form an important factor,
both in weakening the body and instigating the treacherous insurrection
of the phagocytes. Hence Metchnikoff comes to the conclusion that: "The
senile degeneration of an organism is entirely similar to the lesions
induced by certain maladies of a microbic origin", and thus he arrives
at his famous definition: "Old age is an infectious chronic disease,
characterized by a degeneration or an enfeebling of the noble elements
and by the excessive activity of the phagocytes."
If old age is correctly characterized as a disease, and especially if
it is due in part to microbic invasion, it ought to be possible to cure
or postpone it. This, then, is what Metchnikoff has in recent years
made the main aim of his researches.
In particular he suspects the large intestine of harboring some of the
most dangerous of the microscopic enemies of man, the cause of many of
the ills that flesh is heir to. It is in his opinion an excessive and
comparatively unimportant organ, for it can be shortened or removed
without serious consequences. A comparative survey of the anatomy of
the vertebrates shows that as a general rule the longer the intestine
the shorter the life. He does not advocate its extirpation by surgery
or its disinfection by chemicals, but he would crowd out its wild and
poisonous flora by harmless cultivated species. Among the friendly
microbes he regards the lactic acid bacilli as most useful for this
purpose. These act upon milk or fruit sugar, converting it into lactic
acid, which is destructive to most other microbes, including some of
the most dangerous. For example, mysterious outbreaks of typhoid fever
have been recently traced to "typhoid carriers"; that is, persons who,
while immune to the disease themselves, may yet serve for years as
conveyors of the infection. But a thriving colony of Bulgarian bacilli
will drive out the typhoid bacilli and so put a stop to the spread of
the disease.
The difference between harmless and injurious bacteria on which the
lactic acid theory depends is easily understood because it is a matter
of common observation. Meat and milk have much the same composition so
far as their protein is concerned. But whereas meat promptly spoils,
that is, putrefies, with the formation of disgusting and poisonous
products of decomposition, milk sours instead and will remain wholesome
and to some tastes palatable for several days. Both are the results
of bacterial decomposition, but the difference is due to the fact
that milk contains a kind of sugar which, inoculated with the proper
bacilli, is converted into lactic acid, and thus the growth of the
bacteria of putrefaction is for some time prevented. But under certain
circumstances it happens that the latter get the start of the lactic
acid makers, and then the milk goes the way of the meat, and we have a
case of "ptomain poisoning." In short, the aim of swallowing cultures
of lactic acid bacilli by whole-sale is to keep the contents of the
remote regions of our digestive apparatus in the condition of soured
milk rather than that of decayed meat. Recently the same treatment has
been recommended for preserving the teeth, since these mild-mannered
and beneficent bacilli rubbed into the gums will dispossess those which
ordinarily grow in our mouths and attack our teeth.
For aid in his fight against the bacterial poisons that bring on
disease and old age, Metchnikoff has resorted to his native steppes.
The Tartars and Kalmucks of southern Russia had always had as their
favorite food koumiss, prepared by the fermentation of mare's milk,
and nomads of all races have made use of some form of curdled milk,
chiefly because of the difficulty of preserving other kinds of animal
food under primitive conditions. The keffir of the Caucasus, the leben
of Egypt, the matzoon of Armenia, the dadhi of India, and yahourth of
Bulgaria are all produced from milk by the use of various species of
lactic acid bacilli associated with other bacteria of fermentation. Of
these the last, the Bulgarian yahourth, yoghourt, or yagurt, contains
the strongest bacilli; that is, those that are able to stand the
largest percentage of the product of their own activity, lactic acid,
and so Metchnikoff has made them the basis of his dietetics.
A surprisingly large proportion of centenarians are reported from
Bulgaria, where yagurt is used, and Metchnikoff cites a large number
of cases of men and women of extreme old age who have lived largely
on sour milk or on sauerkraut, which also contains the lactic acid
bacilli.[2] Most of these are found among the poorer classes or
comparatively uncivilized races. Sir Moses Montefiore is one of the
very few rich men who have passed the century mark. Metchnikoff uses
this as an argument for the simple life. But it is questionable whether
such data, derived from the casual reports of individual cases and the
generalized observations of travelers, are of much evidential value.
Claims to longevity among the unlettered are notoriously unreliable.
It would be very unsafe to hold that the negroes were longer lived
than the whites, because so many mammies could tell of remembering
Washington. When the British old age pension bill passed, the number of
poor people in Ireland who came forward with evidence that they were
over sixty-five years old surprised the actuaries and embarrassed the
budget. Women are apt to restore double-fold in old age the years they
deprived themselves of in the later thirties.
It is also curious to see a skeptic like Metchnikoff giving serious
consideration to the accounts of longevity given in the Pentateuch
which many orthodox theologians are willing to concede as legendary. He
balks, indeed, at Noah's nine hundred and fifty years and Methuselah's
nine hundred and sixty-nine, but accepts as probable Aaron's one
hundred and twenty-three years and Moses's one hundred and twenty,
quoting the words of Jehovah: "My spirit shall not always strive with
man for that he also is flesh; yet his days shall be an hundred and
twenty years." He accounts for it by their more healthful mode of
living and their freedom from alcoholism and the diseases of vice,
nowadays the chief cause of premature old age. He calls attention also
to the fact that sour milk was in common use among the patriarchs and
was esteemed by Abraham food fit to set before angels. In regard to the
Mosaic dietary regulations he says:
Some of them, it is true, such as the prohibition of
uncooked or partially cooked meat, are confirmed by modern
knowledge. But the greater number of the Mosaic rules, as,
for instance, the prohibition of the consumption as food of
blood or the flesh of pigs or hares, and so forth, are in
direct opposition to a modern knowledge of hygienic diet.
Metchnikoff, being a scientist, uses, of course, these reports of
longevity gathered from historians and travelers merely as suggesting
profitable lines of research, not as proof of any theory. Such proof
can only be obtained by direct experimentation, and accordingly he has
for the past fifteen years been experimenting upon himself. The Pasteur
people do not belong to that class of physicians who refuse to take
their own medicine. Metchnikoff still has a weak heart as the result
of an intentional inoculation with recurrent fever, and some of his
collaborators have inoculated themselves with the most loathsome of
diseases for the purpose of testing a remedy for it. Brown-Séquard, of
the Collège de France, tried, at the age of seventy-two, to rejuvenate
himself by injections of animal secretions, but his hopes proved
unfounded.
But the means advocated by Metchnikoff for the prevention of
senescence, even though it may never fulfill his expectations, has at
least the merit of being harmless, for it is merely the systematic
employment of a food which has been in use by a large part of the
human race from the earliest times. The object being to colonize the
lactic bacilli in the lower part of the digestive tract, the best way
of attaining this has yet to be worked out. The generous drinking of
buttermilk or curdled milk, though this may be nutritious or otherwise
beneficial, does not necessarily accomplish the object, for the bacilli
may have been mostly killed off by the acidity or may be destroyed
in the stomach. Taking a dose of the bacilli in a dried form, as a
tablet or powder, may fail to serve the purpose, because they are in an
inactive state and may not be able to secure a foot-hold for lack of
suitable food, such as milk or fruit sugar. So Metchnikoff has adopted
the plan of taking pure cultures of the Bulgarian and paralactic
bacilli in pasteurized milk or sweetened bouillon and also in the jam
and in a kind of candy prepared from cooked dates soaked in the pure
cultures. He abstains from all alcoholic beverages and uses only cooked
food and boiled water. His daily diet in addition to this consists of
three to five ounces of meat, grains, legumes, and stewed fruit.[3]
This goes counter to the raw food advocates, but here Metchnikoff
has the best of the argument. He also questions the advisability of
excessive chewing as advocated by Mr. Fletcher, and cites cases where
the health has been injured by the practice and the resulting disease
cured by more rapid eating.[4]
As soon as Doctor Metchnikoff first made known his theory, the public,
always on the lookout for a new "Elixir of Life", demanded fermented
milk and the supply was immediately forthcoming, not always of a
satisfactory character. Many of the cultures sold in powder or tabloids
for the purpose or dispensed in drink at the soda fountains are
inactive and useless, or contain other and sometimes undesirable forms
of bacteria. I have found it easy enough to prepare the fermented milk
in the household, where the proper cultures are to be had. All that is
necessary is to sterilize the milk by heating it to the boiling point
or near it and keeping it there for ten minutes; then cool quickly to
100° Fahr. and add the ferment in tabloids or powder or some of the
former batch, and keep covered at this temperature for twelve hours.
A vacuum bottle or fireless cooker is convenient for keeping the
temperature even. The fermented milk properly prepared is somewhat
thickened, slightly acid, and palatable even to those who do not like
ordinary buttermilk.
Metchnikoff's views as to the value of lactic acid have met with not
only the legitimate skepticism and criticism of the medical profession,
but also with the usual ridicule from the press. "Who would want to
live one hundred and fifty years if he had to drink sour milk three
times a day?" is asked, and he is alluded to as "the modern Ponce de
Leon searching for the Fountain of Immortal Youth and finding it in
the Milky Whey." Of course Metchnikoff should not be held responsible
for the exaggerated expectations founded upon his theories or for the
fakes foisted upon the public in his name. He is indeed an original
thinker and a bold experimenter, but he is not a sensationalist or a
seeker for popular applause. He has never said that he expected to live
one hundred and fifty years or that any one else could by following
his regimen. But he does regard that period as more nearly the normal
length of human life than the commonly accepted limit of sixty-five
or seventy, and as possibly attainable through the advance of medical
science. Though he comes of a short-lived family and all his brothers
died at an age much younger than he has now attained, his health is
unusually good for a man of seventy, and he is as hard-working and
enterprising as ever. It is not the mere prolongation of life for which
he is working, but the prolongation of the period of serviceable and
enjoyable life. If he had remained in the University of Odessa, he
would have been retired from his professorship on the ground of old age
in 1900, the year before he published his second and greatest work,
that on "Immunity in Infectious Diseases."
The title which was given to his most popular book in its English
version, "The Prolongation of Life", was not of his choosing
and misrepresents his aim. He regards this volume as well as
its predecessor, "The Nature of Man", as "Studies in Optimistic
Philosophy." They are written to show that science is not merely of
use in facilitating and ameliorating the lot of human beings, but is
also adequate as a guide to conduct and capable of providing it with
ideals of future aspiration. In an age when, as it appears to him,
religion has lost its power, and thinking men no longer have faith in
immortality, he sees them turning to mysticism on the one hand and
to pessimism on the other, and his purpose is to find a way out that
does not involve either. As an exposition of the Religio Medici of the
twentieth century, his work has great significance, and even those
who look with confidence to a future life to rectify the disharmonies
of this one may read with interest the opinions of one who does not
hold their faith upon what may be accomplished toward perfecting the
conditions of existence and may sympathize with and second his efforts
at such amelioration.
Essentially his aim seems to me to be the same as that of Epicurus: to
relieve mankind of its two great evils, pain and fear, the fear of the
gods and the fear of death, the first to be dissipated by showing it
to be imaginary and the second by welcoming death at the proper time.
Like Epicurus, too, but unlike most Epicureans, Metchnikoff preaches
plain living and the avoidance of luxury and dissipation of all kinds.
"It would be true progress", he says, "to abandon modern cuisine and
go back to the simpler dishes of our ancestors", and he objects on
hygienic grounds to modern dress, dwellings, and social customs.
A society called "The Optimists" has been formed in Paris to increase
the sum and intensity of human happiness and to extend the limit of
active and enjoyable life. The founder is Doctor E. Dagincourt and the
secretary is Mme. Languet de Bellevue, who has given fifty thousand
dollars to the movement. Besides Professor Metchnikoff, the club
includes Jean Finot, whose "Science of Happiness" and "Philosophy
of Longevity" present similar ideals to Metchnikoff's "Optimistic
Studies"; Camille Flammarion, the distinguished astronomer and author;
Professor Charles Richet, who received the Nobel prize for medical
discoveries in 1913; Eugene Brieux, author of "Damaged Goods" and
other reform dramas; and Edmond Perrier, head of the Museum of Natural
History.
Optimism Metchnikoff regards as the natural philosophy of old age when
a proper appreciation of the value of life is attained and youthful
pessimism outgrown.
In the normal course of life, however, the young do not show
an instinctive clinging to life in any marked degree. They
often risk their lives for trifling reasons and commit all
sorts of indiscretions hurtful to life or health without a
thought of the consequences. They may be inspired by the
highest motives, but they are equally ready to fritter
strength away in the gratification of the lowest appetites.
Youth is the age of disinterested sacrifice, but also of
indulgence in all kinds of excesses, alcoholic, sexual, and
others. Youths seem to think that they will always attach
the same value to life, and that between death at thirty
years of age and death at sixty there is a difference only
of time. As their love of life is indifferently developed,
young people are often extremely exacting, the pleasure
they enjoy being but moderate, whilst the suffering
provoked in them by the slightest annoyance is intense.
They consequently become epicureans in the lowest sense
of the word, or else abandon themselves to exaggerated
pessimism.--"The Nature of Man", p. 116.
Pessimism was the militant philosophy of the nineteenth century, and
its effects are increasingly felt in the present world-wide tendency to
suicide, individual suicide due to the failure of the instinct to live,
and race suicide due to the failure to propagate. But even pessimism,
harmful as it is upon humanity, may, according to Metchnikoff, have its
uses:
It is pessimism which has been the first to draw up a true
indictment of human nature, and if pain is to be regarded
as useful in its quality of danger signal we should equally
recognize that the pessimistic view of the universe is a
step onward in the evolution of humanity. Without pessimism
we might easily sink into a kind of contented fatalism, and
end in quietism, in the manner of many religions.--"Nature
of Man", p. 194.
The difference between the philosophic pessimist and the scientific
optimist may be illustrated by two incidents. In 1831 Schopenhauer, in
spite of his theory that life was evil and worse than nothing, fled
from Berlin to Frankfort at the first outbreak of the cholera. But we
recall that Metchnikoff, professed optimist and lover of life, went in
1911 to Manchuria into the center of the bubonic plague in its most
virulent form in order to learn how to relieve human suffering. The
difference is one between whiners and helpers.
Schopenhauer wrote that "an alteration of the atmosphere so slight
that it cannot be detected by chemistry brings about cholera or yellow
fever or black death." Metchnikoff's dry comment on this is: "Humanity
will be fortunate if the pessimistic philosophers prove as wrong about
their other grievances as they have proved about disease and medicine."
And he adds that if Koch had discovered his vibrio in 1831, philosophy
would have taken a different course, for Schopenhauer need not have
been frightened away from Berlin, and Hegel, who died of the cholera,
might have gone on with the development of his idealism.
Another paradox appears in the fact that Metchnikoff, who makes
little account of altruism in his system of morality, has devoted his
life to arduous and dangerous researches for the benefit of others,
and, without hope of reward in another life in either the Buddhist
or Christian sense, has labored assiduously to lay the foundations
of a science by which posterity can profit. He regards altruism not
as a permanent and indispensable virtue, but as something to be
gradually got rid of, at least in its extreme forms of heroism and
self-sacrifice. As this is one of the most striking and, it seems to
me, most original points in his philosophy, a passage must be quoted:
As it is highly probable that with the advance of
civilization the greatest evils of humanity will become
lessened, and may even disappear, the sacrifices to be made
will also become less. Now that there is a serum which
protects against plague, there is no room for the heroism
of the doctors who used to incur the greatest danger in
fighting epidemics. Until lately doctors used to risk their
life in treating the throats of diphtheritic patients. A
young doctor who was a friend of mine, of high ability
and promise, died from diphtheria contracted under these
conditions. He met his death, in isolation from his friends
in case of affecting them, with the utmost heroism. Now that
the antidiphtheritic serum has been discovered, such heroism
would be unnecessary. The advance of science has removed the
occasion of such sacrifices.
It is now very long since there has been opportunity for
the heroism which steeled the hand of Abraham to sacrifice
his only son to his religion. Human sacrifice, based on
the highest morality, has become more and more rare, and
will finally disappear. Rational morality, although it may
admire such conduct, has no use for it. So also it may
foresee a time when men will be so highly developed that
instead of being delighted to take advantage of the sympathy
of their fellows, they will refuse it absolutely. Neither
the Kantian idea of virtue, doing good as a pure duty, nor
that of Herbert Spencer, according to which men have an
instinctive need to help their fellows, will be realized in
the future. The ideal will rather be that of men who will be
self-sufficient and who will no longer permit others to do
them good.--"Prolongation of Life", p. 323.
As he objects to conditions that demand sympathy and self-sacrifice
from one person for another, so also he opposes any state of society
that involves the sacrifice or subordination of the individual for the
benefit of the community as a whole.
It is most probable that no shade of socialism will be
able to solve the problem of social life with a sufficient
respect for the maintenance of individual liberty. None the
less the progress of human knowledge will inevitably bring
about a great leveling of human fortunes. Intellectual
culture will lead men to give up many things that are
superfluous or even harmful, and that are still thought
indispensable by most people. The conceptions that the
greatest good fortune consists in the complete evolution of
the normal cycle of human life and that this goal can be
reached most easily by plain and sober habits will convince
men of the folly of much of the luxury that now shortens
human existence. Whilst the rich will choose a simpler mode
of life and the poor will be able to live better, none
the less, private property, acquired or inherited, may be
maintained. Evolution must be gradual, and much effort and
new knowledge is required. Sociology, a new-born science,
must learn of biology, her older sister. Biology teaches
us that in proportion that the organization becomes more
complex, the consciousness of individuality develops,
until a point is reached at which individuality cannot be
sacrificed to the community. Amongst low creatures such as
Myxomycetes and Siphonophora, the individuals disappear
wholly or almost wholly in the community; but the sacrifice
is small, as in these creatures the consciousness of
individuality has not appeared. Social insects are in a
stage intermediate between that of the lower animals and
man. It is only in man that the individual has definitely
acquired consciousness, and for that reason a satisfactory
social organization cannot sacrifice it on pretext of
the common good. To this conclusion the study of the
social evolution of living beings leads me. It is plain
that the study of human individuality is a necessary
step in the organization of the social life of human
beings.--"Prolongation of Life", p. 231.
One might think in reading "The Nature of Man" that Metchnikoff was
laying the foundations of a pessimistic instead of an optimistic system
of philosophy. He begins, as Schopenhauer or Von Hartmann might have
done, by showing how ill adapted to his environment is that simian
abortion we call man. Among the examples of marvelously perfect
adaptation of structure or instinct in nature are cited Darwin's
orchids and Fabre's wasps. M. Fabre seems to be indispensable to French
philosophers. We have seen that Maeterlinck and Bergson get some of
their finest illustrations from this "Homer of the Insects." But man is
not so favored of nature as the orchids or wasps:
There can be no doubt but that the human constitution,
although in many ways perfect and sublime, exhibits numerous
and serious disharmonies which are the source of all our
troubles. Not being so well adapted to the conditions of
life as orchids are, for example, in the matter of their
fertilization by the mediation of insects, or the burrowing
wasps for the protection of their young, humanity resembles
rather those insects the instinct of which guides them
toward the flame which burns their wings.
In the first half of the nineteenth century there were published at
the cost of five thousand dollars apiece eight volumes known as the
Bridgewater Treatises on "The Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God as
Manifested in the Creation," using as illustrations the structure of
the hand, the instincts of animals, the chemistry of digestion, and
other unworked sources of natural theology. The science was not bad for
its time, nor was the argument altogether fallacious. But the authors
overlooked one thing, namely, that Bridgewater is a game two can play
at, and that it would be equally possible to fill eight other volumes
by picking out a different set of facts, almost equally imposing, to
prove something very different, either that there is no God or that
there is a devil, either atheism or Manicheism. Metchnikoff's "Nature
of Man" supplies much of the material that a devil's advocate might
then have used in his Anti-Bridgewater Treatises.
But Metchnikoff, writing in the twentieth century, makes quite another
use of it. He has doubtless never read the Bridgewater Treatises,
nor have many of us. There is no reason to now. They have become
waste paper, not because they were false, but because the whole mass
of the argument against them has vanished, the half recognized and
subconscious argument against theism derivable from the undeniable
existence of disharmonies and imperfections in the universe. This
battlefield is deserted; though the same struggle continues, it is on
higher ground. This change has been wrought by the introduction of the
idea of evolution. We now realize we do not live in a static universe.
The theism which is founded on evolution may serenely acknowledge
the discords and failures which would be fatal to the theism of the
Bridgewater era. And Metchnikoff, as an atheist, is equally untroubled
by the existence of misleading instincts and useless, disease-producing
organs, for interpreting them in the light of evolution he escapes the
slough of nineteenth century pessimism and arrives triumphantly at the
goal of optimism.
At least he says he does. I cannot see that his argument leads to
optimism in the strict sense of the word, although it certainly leads
him to a very sane and hopeful meliorism. The weakest point in his
doctrine of orthobiosis seems to me his theory of euthanasia, that at
the end of the "normal cycle" of life--whatever that may be--the desire
for life is replaced by an instinct for death. The evidence he adduces
in support of this is very scanty and questionable. It is curious
to note that it was the experiences of Metchnikoff's brother which
supplied Tolstoy with the material for the most harrowing picture of
the fear of death in all literature, "The Death of Ivan Ilyitch"?
In "The Prolongation of Life" Metchnikoff devotes much space to an
analysis of the first and second parts of "Faust" and the life of
Goethe, whom he manifestly regards as an excellent example of a
complete and well-ordered life. The reader will observe that while
he condemns Goethe's drinking habits because they undermined his
constitution, he has, from the standpoint of a naturalist, no word of
blame for his promiscuous love affairs, since these contributed to the
development of his genius. This is, to say the least, a very one-sided
view to take of it.
But this volume is concerned with the exposition rather than the
criticism of the authors discussed, so I will conclude the chapter with
a quotation which sums up his philosophy and sets forth his ideals:
In progress toward the goal, nature will have to be
consulted continuously. Already, in the case of the
ephemerids, nature has produced a complete cycle of normal
life ending in natural death. In the problem of his own
fate, man must not be content with the gifts of nature; he
must direct them by his own efforts. Just as he has been
able to modify the nature of animals and plants, man must
attempt to modify his own constitution, so as to readjust
its disharmonies.
Breeders form a conception of the ideal result when they are
about to attempt the production of some new variety which
shall be pleasing æsthetically and of service to man. Next,
they study the existing individual variations in animals and
plants on which they wish to work, and from which they will
select with minutest care. The ideal result must have some
relation to the constitution of the organism selected. To
modify the human constitution, it will be necessary, first,
to frame the ideal, and thereafter to set to work with all
the resources of science.
If there can be formed an ideal able to unite men in a
kind of religion of the future, this ideal must be founded
on scientific principles. And if it be true, as has been
asserted so often, that man can live by faith alone, the
faith must be in the power of science.--"The Nature of Man",
p. 302.
* * * * *
HOW TO READ METCHNIKOFF
The philosophy of Metchnikoff is given in two volumes published in
this country by Putnams, "The Nature of Man" and "The Prolongation
of Life." The second and later volume will perhaps better serve the
purpose of the general reader, but either will give the main outlines
of his theories. Both volumes are written for the medical student
rather than the public, and discuss some unpleasant subjects, but
not in any objectionable manner. The English translation, at least
in the first editions, is clumsy and careless. These works in the
original are entitled "Essais sur la nature humaine", Paris, 1903, and
"Essais optimistes", Paris, 1907. The German version, "Studien über
die Natur des Menschen", Leipsic, 1904, is prefaced by Ostwald. "The
New Hygiene", Three Lectures on the Prevention of Infectious Diseases,
prefaced by Lankester, is published by W. T. Keever & Co., Chicago.
Articles by Metchnikoff easily accessible are: "Studies in Natural
Death", in _Harper's Magazine_, Vol. CXIV, p. 272; "The Utility of
Lactic Microbes", in _Century_, Vol. LXXIX, p. 53; "Old Age", in
Smithsonian Report, 1904.
A criticism of Metchnikoff's individualism from a socialistic point of
view is "The Optimism of Metchnikoff", by F. Carrel, in _Fortnightly
Review_, Vol. LXXXIX, p. 51. A criticism to which Metchnikoff has made
a reply in his second volume is "Morale et Biologie", by D. Parodi, in
_Revue philosophique,_ Vol. LVIII, p. 113. "Metchnikoff, philosophe"
(Bibliothèque des Entretiens Idéalistes, Paris, 1911) is a pamphlet by
a young Catholic, Fernand Divoire, in a style of frantic denunciation.
An interesting character sketch by A. McFarlane is to be found in
_McClure's Magazine_, Vol. XXV, p. 541. Two interviews with Metchnikoff
by Herman Bernstein are contained in _With Master Minds_ (Universal
Series Publishing Company New York). Sir Ray Lankester in his "Science
from an Easy Chair" has a chapter on "Metchnikoff and Tolstoy."
Good articles on the theory of immunity as developed by Metchnikoff and
others are: "The War Against Disease", in _Edinburgh Review_, October,
1910; "Paul Ehrlich: The Man and His Work", by Marguerite Marks, in
_McClure's Magazine_, 1911, p. 184; "Natural Resistance to Disease", by
Dr. Simon Flexner, of the Rockefeller Institute, in _Popular Science
Monthly_, July, 1909, and in Smithsonian Report, 1909; "The Struggle
for Immunity", by H. S. Williams, in _Harper's Magazine_, December,
1911. Circular No. 171 of the Bureau of American Industry of the United
States Department of Agriculture gives a description of _Fermented
Milks_ by F. A. Rogers.
[1] The list is instructive because it shows clearly that the names
first in the hearts of their countrymen are those who have become
eminent in science and letters or have done signal service in the
cause of the republic. The leading names are as follows: 1, Pasteur
(receiving 1,338,425 votes); 2, Victor Hugo (1,227,103); 3, Gambetta
(1,155,672); 4, Napoleon Bonaparte (1,118,034); 5, Thiers (1,039,453);
6, Lazare Carnot, organizer of the republican army of the Revolution;
7, Pierre Curie, discoverer of radium; 8, Alexandre Dumas, _père_;
9, Dr. Roux, inventor of the diphtheritic serum; 10, Parmentier,
introducer of the potato into France; 11, Ampère, father of dynamic
electricity; 12, Brazza, who secured the Kongo region for France; 13,
Zola, novelist and defender of Dreyfus; 14, Lamartine, republican poet;
15, Arago, astronomer and physicist; 16, Sarah Bernhardt, actress;
17, Premier Waldeck-Rousseau; 18, Marshal MacMahon; 19, President
Carnot; 20, Chevreul, chemist; 21, Chateaubriand; 22, Ferdinand de
Lesseps, constructor of the Suez Canal and projector of the Panama; 23,
Michelet; 24, Jacquard, inventor of the pattern loom; 25, Jules Verne;
26, President Loubet; 27, Deufert-Rochereau, defender of Belfort.
[2] He might add to his notable examples of persons addicted to the use
of curdled milk the case of Tze-Hsi, the Dowager Empress of China, who
at the age of seventy-four had energy enough to change her own mind and
revolutionize the government of four hundred million people.
[3] See "Les Microbes lactiques et leur utilité pour la santé" in _La
Revue,_ 1901, p. 145. A full discussion of the subject of fermented
milks with methods for their preparation in the household may be found
in a volume by L. M. Douglas, recently published under the sensational
title of "The Bacillus of Long Life" (Putnams).
[4] "The Prolongation of Life", p. 159.