Metchnikoff's Works on Immunity

A selection of Metchnikoff's publications on immunity available for a free download

Books

Lectureson the Comparative Pathology of Inflammation. Translated by F. A. Starling and E. H. Starling. London: Kegan Paul,Trench, Trübner & Co., 1893. Still relevant and regarded as a classic, this little book is a compilation of the 12 lectures on inflammation and immunity Metchnikoff delivered at the Pasteur Institute in 1891.

Immunity in Infective Diseases. Translated from the French by Francis G. Binnie. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1905. Metchnikoff's 600-page magnum opus on immunity.

Selected Scientific Papers (in English, French and German)

1883: "Untersuchungen über die Intracelluläre verdauung bei wirbellosen Tieren." Arbeiten aus dem Zoologischen Instituten der Universität Wien und der Zoologischen Station in Triest, v. 5, No. 2, pp. 141-68. In his very first paper on immunity, Metchnikoff described the famous experiment with starfish larvae he conducted in Messina and introduced the terms phagocyte and phagocytosis.

1884: "A disease of Daphnia caused by a yeast. A contribution to the theory of phagocytes as agents for attack on disease-causing organisms." In: Brock Thomas D. (Ed.) Microbiology: 1556 to 1940. ASM Press, 1998, pp. 132-38. This is an English translation of Metchnikoff's 1884 study, originally published (in German) in Virchow's Archive, in which he for the first time observed phagocytosis in living animals: water fleas, or daphnia.

1887: "Uber den Kampf der Zellen gegen Erysipelkokken, ein Beitrag zur Phagocytenlehre." Archiv für pathologische Anatomie und Physiologie und für klinische Medicin, 107, pp. 209-49. In this paper on erysipelas, or St. Anthony’s fire, Metchnikoff for the first time divided phagocytes into "macrophages" and "microphages."

1891: "Etudes sur l'immunité. 4e mémoire: L'immunité des cobayes vaccinés contre le vibrio Metchnikovii." Annales de l'Institut Pasteur, v. 5, No. 8, pp. 465-78. Metchnikoff presented the results of this study at the Seventh International Congress of Hygiene and Demography in London, during the first ever public debate on immunity to be held at a medical conference.

1894: "L'état actuel de la question de l'immunité. Rapport du Congrès international de Budapest." Annales de l'Institut Pasteur, v. 8, No. 10, pp. 706-21. Metchnikoff's talk at the Eighth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography in Budapest.

1900: "Sur l'immunité." In: Comptes rendus, 13éme Congrès International de Médecine. Section bactériologie parasitolologie. 1900, Paris, pp. 11-27. Metchnikoff's last major report on immunity at a medical conference.