Metchnikoff in Cunina and allied genera.
Massart and Bordet, Leber, Metchnikoff and others have studied the phenomenon in leucocytes, with the result that while there is evidence of their being positively chemiotactic to the toxins of many pathogenic microbes, it is also apparent that they are negatively influenced by such substances as lactic acid.
This phagocytal action of certain cells of the body is held by Metchnikoff and his followers to have an important bearing on the pathology of immunity.
A further application of the facts of chemiotaxis and phagocytosis has been made by Metchnikoff to the case of Inflammation.
Meanwhile Cohnheim and Metchnikoff were engaged in destroying the ontological conception not of fever only, but also of inflammation, of which, as a local event, an ontological conception was no less strongly implanted.