The Man Who Drank Cholera and Launched the Yogurt Craze

What do Jamie Lee Curtis, gut bacteria, and a long forgotten Russian scientist have in common? Why, yogurt, of course. But wait, the answer is not that easy. Behind it stretches a tale that shows you can never predict cultural influence. It wends its way through the Pasteur Institute, the Nobel Prize, one of the hottest fields of scientific research today, the microbiome, and one of the trendiest avenues in nutrition, probiotics. It all began in the 19th century with a hyperactive kid in Russia who had a preternatural ability to connect dots where nobody saw dots at all.

When Ilya Metchnikoff was 8 and running around on his parents’ Panassovka estate in Little Russia, now Ukraine, he was making notes on the local flora like a junior botanist. He gave science lectures to his older brothers and local kids whose attendance he assured by paying them from his pocket money. Metchnikoff earned the nickname “Quicksilver” because he was in constant motion, always wanting to see, taste, and try everything, from studying how his father played card games to learning to sew and embroider with the maids. His wife that Metchnikoff asked the “queerest” questions, often exasperating his caretakers. “He could only be kept quiet when his curiosity was awakened by observation of some natural objects such as an insect or a butterfly.”