THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE. 



567 



THE PKOGKESS OF SCIENCE. 



RUDOLF VIRCHOW. 



The world has lost one of its great 

 men in the death of Professor Rudolf 

 Virchow. Born on October 13, 1821, 

 the son of a small shopkeeper and 

 farmer in an obscure village of Pomer- 

 ania, he died on September 5, known 

 everywhere as one of the greatest if 

 not the greatest of contemporary sci- 

 entific men, having at the same time 

 performed in his long life public ser- 

 vices such as do not ordinarily fall to 

 the lot of the man of science. It is 

 not possible to recount in this place 

 the numerous events of Virchow's ca- 

 reer nor to describe his great contribu- 

 tions to science. His ' Cellular Pathol- 

 ogy ' was published in 1858; his 

 theories and experiments having been 

 in part printed in earlier volumes of 

 the Archives filr pathologische Anato- 

 mie und Physiologie, established by him 

 and Reinhart in 1848. Virchow's main 

 thesis was that the cells of the animal 

 body propagate themselves, and that 

 outside forces acting on the cells pro- 

 duce in them mechanical or chemical 

 changes which are disease. The facts 

 of bacteriology since discovered har- 

 monize with this theory and do not 

 conflict with it as has sometimes been 

 assumed. Virchow more than any 

 other one man established the science 

 of pathology and made it possible for 

 medicine to become an applied science. 

 Only second in importance to his con- 

 tributions to pathology was his work 

 in anthropology which covered all 

 branches of the science — physical meas- 

 urements, racial differences, ethnology 

 and even archeology. He did not op- 

 pose evolution, having indeed advo- 

 cated the transmutation of species 

 before Darwin, but he was critical in 

 his attitude toward natural selection. I 



Virchow's scientific work was singu- 

 larly complete. He made numerous and 

 exact observations and experiments; 

 he deduced from them wide-reaching 

 theories; he conducted an important 

 journal for more than fifty years; he 

 wrote text-books, summaries of scien- 

 tific advance and books popularizing 

 science; he established a school to 

 which students came from all parts of 

 the world, while at the same time tak- 

 ing part in the education of the peo- 

 ple; he founded a great museum and 

 took a leading part in scientific socie- 

 ties; he applied science directly to 

 human welfare. 



It is almost incredible that among 

 these multifarious scientific activities 

 Virchow should have been one of the 

 leading statesmen of his country. 

 Here too his work was wide and long 

 continued. He was a member of the 

 municipal council of Berlin for more 

 than forty years, and through him the 

 hygienic conditions of the capital were 

 revolutionized. He had been a member 

 of the Prussian chamber since 1862 

 and was for twenty-five years chair- 

 man of the committee on finance. He 

 was leader of the radical party in the 

 Reichstag. In his public career he 

 opposed centralization, autocracy and 

 war, and advocated all measures for 

 the welfare of the people. He was at 

 one time compelled to leave the Uni- 

 versity of Berlin owing to his political 

 activity, but his personality and emi- 

 nence were such that he was recalled 

 to a professorship in 1856, and he was 

 thereafter the preeminent representa- 

 tive of academic freedom. 



In this number of the Monthly will 

 be found the Huxley lecture on ' Re- 

 cent Advances in Science and their 

 Bearing on Medicine and Surgery,' 



