We regret to record the death of Professor Metehnikoff at
the Pasteur Institute, where he had done valuable work in maintaining the health of the Allied Armies. The British public readily connects his name with the " sour milk " cure. He never pretended that this germ-killing treatment would prolong life till it had been applied for three or four generations, but he did believe that under the conditions he foresaw to be possible the normal life of man would be well over a hundred years. He conceived senility as a curable disease. He himself was seventy-one when he died. But his title to fame was not, alter all, his sour milk method, but his doctrine of phagocytosis. He stated the wonderful theory, which other researches have tended to confirm, that among the white corpuscles of the blood the phagocytes act as benignant guardians of the purity of the blood, assembling round poisonous invaders and strangling them. When the phagocytes are unable to resist the invader disease obtains a footing. Bodily health, in short, depends upon the defensive strength of the phagocytes.
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