In a medical review which he read at Trieste, he found the first account of his phagocyte theory; it was an unfavourable and hostile criticism by a German scientist of the name of Baumgarten, endeavouring to prove that Metchnikoff's deductions were inadmissible. This grieved and pained him very much, but he immediately recovered himself and strongly determined to study the medical side of the question in order to prove on that ground that his theory was well-founded.
A Bacteriological Institute in Odessa--Unsatisfactory conditions-- Experiments on erysipelas and on relapsing fever.
The results of Pasteur's antirabic inoculations were published in 1885. The Municipality of Odessa, desirous of founding a bacteriological station in that town, sent Dr. Gamaléia to Paris to study the new method. Metchnikoff was appointed Scientific Director of the new institution, and Drs. Gamaléia and Bardach, former pupils of his, were entrusted with the preparation of vaccines and preventive inoculations. The Institute, opened in 1886, was founded at the expense of the Municipality of Odessa and of the _Zemstvo_ of the Kherson Province.
Metchnikoff himself describes as follows the short time he spent in that Institute:
... Having given up my State work, I placed myself at the service of the city and the _Zemstvo_.
Absorbed as I was by the scientific part of the work, I confided to my young colleagues the practical part, i.e. the vaccinations and the perfection of vaccines.
It was to be supposed that all would go very well.
Work in the new Institute began with ardour. But, very soon, a strong opposition manifested itself against it.
The medical administration began to make incursions into the Institute, with a view to finding some infractions of the regulations.
Medical society was hostile to every work which issued from the laboratory. The institutions which had subscribed funds for the Institute were demanding practical results, while all necessary work towards that object was met by every sort of obstacle.
For instance, in order to destroy certain voles, very harmful to the cereals of Southern Russia, we proposed to make experiments as to infecting those rodents with the microbe of chicken cholera. Laboratory experiments were begun with that object. But, one day, I received an order from the Prefect peremptorily forbidding those experiments. This measure had been taken at the instigation of local physicians; having seen in a Petersburg newspaper an article by some one who had not a notion of bacteriology, they had assured the Prefect that chicken cholera could turn into Asiatic cholera.