METCHNIKOFF, ILtYA ( 1 815—). A Russian embryologist and cytologist, born in the Province of Kharkov, 1\1;iy 15, 1345. Ile was educated at Kharkov. and afterwards studied at Giessen and at _Munich. Ile was appointed to the chair of zoi;logy at Odessa in 1870, hut resigned in 1882 to devote himself to private researches. In 1881, as the resnit of work on sponges amt polyps. he published an epoch-making memoir on the intracellular diges tion of invertebrates. Ile found that the in dividual cells of sponges took in solid particles of food and digested them in order to provide material for tin' growth of the young; and he saw the annebadike eggs of a polyp (Tubularia) eat and digest the neighboring follicular cells. Ile also established the fact that certain wander ing anueboid cells attack, ingest, or absorb parts of the body which become either useless or sept le and thus harmful to the organism; and even hard objects, as also microbes or disease germs and the bacteria which have entered a wound. He called these microbe-eaters 'phagocytes' (q.v.). Ile boldly (1884) threw out the remarkable theory that inflammation in the vertebrates is due to the struggle between the white or amwboid corpuscles of the blood and the disease. germs
within it. He went to Paris. became ehef-de serrice in Pasteur's Institute in 1392, and at the death of Pasteur in 1895 succeeded him as the director of the Pasteur Institute. lie is a for eign member of the loyal Society of London. Aletehnikoff has shown the value of and the close relation between studies in the development of the lower animals and physiological and mediealstud ies and practice. His chief later works are: "Un tersuchungen fiber die intracelluliire Vcrdauung bei wirbellosen Thieren," in .1rbeitea ass dent zoologischen Institut der /'nfrcrsi!ii/ Wien, vol. v. (1883; ib., 1881) ; "Veber die Resit-hung der Phagoeyten zn Slilzbrandhacillen," in Vircliow's .1rchie fur pa thologische Anatomic and Physio logic, etc., xcvii., p. 502 (1884; ib., 1892) ; LceollS stir in pathologic con parse de l'in flam mat ion ( Paris, 1892).