Palla Ákos szerk.: Az Országos Orvostörténeti Könyvtár közleményei 29. (Budapest, 1963)

Dr. Harangby László: Mecsnyikov munkássága és jelentősége az orvostudományban

and so they protect the animal from disease. On the other hand the function of phagocytes sometimes ceases and in such cases the microbes which had got into the organism sprout out colonies and very soon kill the animal. Thus the phagocytes are the guards of the living organism, because the Daphnae is immune, i. e. free from the infection of microbes provided, it is being protected by phagocytes but on the other hand if the phagocytes fail to do their services the animal will be ruined incurably. Mechnikov however, was far from being satisfied with the achieved results. First of all he investigated thoroughly the question, what happen to the foreign material taken into the interior of phagocytes and therefore he studied the processes of cell digestion beginning from the one-celled up to the cells of the highest classes of animals. Müller said about these investigations in his summary of immunity: „Mechnikov followed with extraordinary richness and remarkable power of his mental capacity, inventiveness and energy, the phagocytosis from the simplest one-cell organism up to Man." These classical investigations had revealed that phagocytosis, i. e. to incooperation of foreign material into the cells is a basic phenomenon with feeding of the most simple one-cell animal for example amoebae, just the same way as it is with that of the primitive invertebrate. Phagocytosis is with this latter animals a general and substantial quality of the cells but the higher we mount on the ladder of animal hierarchy, the lesser and lesser are the number of such cells, as are able to do the said work, while the role of phagocyt comes completely to an end in nourishment. The capacity for phagocytosis remains in the highest order of vertibrates solely in such cells, as are cxclusivly destined for that aim and these cells have the direct task to devoure and digest such strange matter or pathogenic germs as they had penetrated into the system. Mechnikov divided the phagocytes being in mammals into two groups and differentiated moving and fixed ones. He classed the leucocytes into the first category and into the second : the system of reticuloendothelial which became later of greatest importance. He summarized that the protection, i. e. immunity, of the living organism is bound to the function of certain cells the so called phagocytes, these cells being the guards of the organism and the mastering of infectious diseases were the result of the activity