Everything about Eli Metchnikoff totally explained
Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov (Илья Ильич Мечников, also known as
Elie Metchnikoff,
May 16,
1845, near
Kharkiv,
Ukraine –
July 16,
1916,
Paris) was a
Russian
microbiologist best remembered for his pioneering research into the
immune system. Mechnikov received the
Nobel Prize in Medicine in
1908, for his work on
phagocytosis.
Mechnikov was born in a village near Kharkov in the Russian Empire (now
Kharkiv,
Ukraine), the youngest son of an officer in the
Russian Imperial Guard of
Russian ethnicity. His elder brother
Lev became a prominent geographer and sociologist. Ilya was raised predominantly by his Jewish mother, née
Nevakhovich, and had a passion for
natural history. When
Charles Darwin’s book,
The Origin of Species was published, he was eager to believe the theory of
evolution.
He went to
Kharkov University to study
natural sciences, completing his four-year degree in just two years. He then went to
Germany to study marine
fauna on the small
North Sea island of
Heligoland and then at the
University of Giessen,
University of Göttingen and then at
Munich Academy. In 1867 he returned to the Russian Empire to the appointment of
docent at the new University of Odessa, followed by an appointment at the
University of St. Petersburg. In 1870 he returned to
Odessa to take up the appointment of Titular Professor of
Zoology and
Comparative Anatomy.
His first wife, Ludmila Feodorovovna, suffered from
tuberculosis, of which she died in 1873. Her death, combined with other problems, caused Mechnikov to unsuccessfully
attempt suicide, taking a large dose of
opium. He married again in 1875, and his second wife, Olga, caught
typhoid in 1880, causing Mechnikov to again attempt suicide—this time by injecting himself with relapsing fever, which didn't kill him, but made him very ill.
He became interested in the study of
microbes, and especially the
immune system. In 1882 he resigned his position at Odessa University and set up a private laboratory at
Messina to study comparative
embryology, where he discovered
phagocytosis after experimenting on the
larvae of
starfish. His theories were radical: certain
white blood cells could engulf and destroy harmful bodies such as bacteria. The ‘sophisticated’ microbe hunters in the West —
Pasteur,
Behring, etc. — scorned the Russian and his humble theory.
Mechnikov returned to
Odessa as director of an institute set up to carry out
Louis Pasteur's vaccine against
rabies, but due to some difficulties left in 1888 and went to
Paris to seek Pasteur's advice. Pasteur gave him an appointment at the
Pasteur Institute, where he remained for the rest of his life.
Later vindicated, Mechnikov's work on
phagocytes won him the Nobel Prize in 1908. He worked with
Émile Roux on an ointment that would prevent people from contracting
syphilis, an STD.
Mechnikov also developed a theory that
aging is caused by toxic bacteria in the gut and that
lactic acid could prolong life. Based on his theory, he drank
sour milk every day. He died in 1916 at 71 years of age (well above the average life expectancy at the time), after writing three books:
Immunity in Infectious Diseases, The Nature of Man, and
The Prolongation of Life: Optimistic Studies.
It was the last of these works, along with Metchnikoff's studies into the potential life-lengthening properties of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) that inspired Japanese scientist
Minoru Shirota to begin investigating the causal relationship between bacteria and good intestinal health. Convinced that a healthy balance of intestinal bacteria held the key to man's general well-being, Shirota dedicated his life and work to isolating a strain of LAB which would pass into the intestines, positively contributing to the balance of
gut flora. In 1935, he succeeded in cultivating a unique bacterium, sufficiently robust to bypass the acidic environment of the stomach and enter the intestines directly. He placed this pioneering strain into a
fermented milk drink in order to make its benefits accessible to all - this drink remains available worldwide today (in a recipe almost unchanged from Shirota's original formula) as the
Yakult drink.
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