Then the shambles began. Gamaléia and the other members of
Metchnikoff’s practical staff began to fight among themselves and
mix up vaccines; microbes spilled out of tubes; the doctors of the
town--naturally a little jealous of this new form of healing--started
to snoop into the laboratory, to ask embarrassing questions, to
start whispers going through the town: “Who is this Professor
Metchnikoff--he hasn’t even a doctor’s certificate. He is only
a naturalist, a mere bug-hunter--how can he know anything about
preventing diseases?”
“Where are those cures?” demanded the people. “Give us our
preventions!” shouted the farmers--who had gone down into their socks
for good roubles. Metchnikoff came out of the fog of his theory of
phagocytes for a moment, and tried to satisfy them by sowing chicken
cholera bacilli among the meadow mice which were eating up the
crops. But, alas, a lying, inflammatory report appeared in the daily
paper, screaming that this Metchnikoff was sowing death--that chicken
cholera could change into human cholera....
“I am overwhelmed with my researches,” muttered Metchnikoff. “I am
a theoretician--my researches need a peaceful shelter in which to
be developed....” So he asked for a vacation, got it, packed his
bag, and went to the Congress of Vienna to tell everybody about
phagocytes, and to look for a quiet place in which to work. He _must_
get away from that dreadful need to prove that his theories were
true by dishing out cures to impatient authorities and peasants who
insisted on getting their money’s worth out of research. From Vienna
he went to Paris to the Pasteur Institute, and there a great triumph
and surprise waited for him. He was introduced to Pasteur, and at
once Metchnikoff exploded into tremendous explanations of his theory
of phagocytes. He made a veritable movie of the battle between the
wandering cells and microbes....
The old captain of the microbe hunters looked at Metchnikoff out
of tired gray eyes that now and then sparkled a little: “I at
once placed myself on your side, Professor Metchnikoff,” said
Pasteur, “for I have been struck by the struggle between the divers
microörganisms which I have had occasion to observe. I believe you
are on the right road.”
Although the struggles Pasteur mentioned had nothing to do with
phagocytes gobbling up microbes, Metchnikoff--and this is not
unnatural--was filled with a proud joy. The greatest of all microbe
hunters really understood him, believed in him.... Olga’s father
had died, leaving them a modest income, here in Paris his theory of
phagocytes would have the prestige of a great Institute back of it.
“Is there a place for me here?” he asked. “I wish only to work in one
of your laboratories in an honorary capacity,” begged Metchnikoff.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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