Palla Ákos szerk.: Az Országos Orvostörténeti Könyvtár közleményei 29. (Budapest, 1963)
Dr. Harangby László: Mecsnyikov munkássága és jelentősége az orvostudományban
a success obtained in partial question but correspondes rather to the tendency, by which the bacteriologist, working but in laboratories and not careing for almost anything for the diseased organism had been led back to vivid reality and to the sick human organism. This last statement can only be understood in its real truth if we go thoroughly into the first examinations made by Mechnikov. He had chosen totally transparent animals i. e. sea-star grubs for the object of his first observations in Messina, and he examined the problem what would happen in the organism of such animals if a strange and well visible substance were injected into the same e. g. carmindye. It was easy to observe under magnifying glass how the colour-granuls were soon enclosed by wandering cells in the transparent animals and were incorporated and carried away. Pushing his examinations further on, he pricked into the animals tiny wood splinters and he saw with great surprise how the wandering cells rushed to the place of pricking, and how they tried to get rid of the foreign body. The great researcher have the ability to notice the interrelation of symptoms being apparently far away from each other. On the basis of the above experiences the image of a purulent finger-in consequence of a penetrating thorn-cropped up before Mechnikov, and the thought that the wandering cells of the sea-star grubs must have a similar destination as the pus-cells of human beings. On the other hand by the thorough examination of the cleaning function of wandering cells, he came to the conclusion that the only means of safeguarding the organism against infection by absorbing microbes must be the abovementioned wandering cells respectively i. e. what we called in Greek by the name of phagocytes. Mechnikov who had meanwhile returned to Odessa made an effort to prove this thesis by direct observation too. He looked for such experimental subjects as were also transparent and made at the same time possible to observe them directly: the penetration of pathogenis germs. After long tests he found such a being in the Daphnea, i. e. a microscopic cray fish called water-flea which usually swallowed with its nourishement pointed pathogenic microbes called Monospora bicuspidata. It can be observed directly under the microscope, how the phagocytes immidiately enclose the microbes infiltrating through the stomachwall, take them into themselves and digest them at last
