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Luba Vikhanski. Immunity: How Elie Metchnikoff Changed the Course of Modern Medicine. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2016. 324 pp. $26.99 (9781613731109).
Luba Vikhanski's graceful biography of Elie Metchnikoff is the first English study published in twenty-five years. Through extensive archival research she has provided the most intimate portrait available of this remarkable scientist, and in celebration of the centennial of his death, it is a timely account. In 1911, a public poll ranked him among the world's ten greatest men. Not to gainsay "greatest," clearly he was an international celebrity for at least two well-publicized contributions. The first, and the one firmly grounded in his research, concerned the discernment of how animals combatted microbial pathogens. He argued that phagocytes composed the first line of immune defense, while his German competitors maintained that immunity rested with the passive action of antitoxins. The debate became polemical, not only on the basis of scientific arguments, but it also included prideful nationalism, where Metchnikoff s French supporters paired off against the German representatives of the chemical school. The argument finally...