838 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



field of pathological anatomy, in which he is generally recognized as 

 the founder of the theory of cellular pathology. The character and 

 value of his work in this field are reviewed by Professor Jacobi, of this 

 city, in his address before the New York College of Physicians and 

 Surgeons. He remarks that, before and about the time when Virchow 

 was preparing to commence his career, medical science in Germany 

 was by no means independent and self-governing. There was no coun- 

 try in Europe in which observation and regard for facts, and facts 

 only, were less esteemed than in Germany. England had enjoyed a 

 predilection for pathological anatomy since John Hunter. France had 

 lived through its most brilliant medical career, and could show a roll 

 of illustrious, sober, and painstaking men, whose successful labors had 

 placed the medical science of that country far above the level of any 

 other. " Meanwhile, German medicine was controlled by what was 

 called philosophy, and mainly by the so-called philosophy of nature. 

 . . . Everything in medicine, not accepted because it was old and tra- 

 ditional, was a matter of speculation a priori only. The bases of 

 speculation were premises construed by reasoning, not founded on 

 facts ; by theories not built on experience, far less on experimentation. 

 Both facts and experimentation were claimed by Virchow as the only 

 admissible foundations of scientific medicine, no matter how long it 

 would take to collect them or to establish them. At the same time he 

 was perfectly well aware that the literature of the last two thousand 

 years contained a great many available points ; nobody ever was more 

 honest in collecting material or giving credit." 



Virchow wrote in the first volume of his " Archiv," in 1847: " We 

 ought not to deceive ourselves or each other in regard to the present 

 condition of medical science. Unmistakablv, medical men are sick of 

 the large number of new hypothetical systems which are thrown aside 

 as rubbish, only to be replaced by similar ones. We shall soon per- 

 ceive that observation and experiments only have a permanent value. 

 Then, not as the outgrowth of personal enthusiasm, but as the result 

 of the labors of many close investigators, pathological physiology 

 will find its sphere. It will prove the fortress of scientific medicine, 

 the outworks of which are pathological anatomy and clinical research." 



The cell had been discovered to be the fundamental basis, by 

 Schleiden, of the vegetable, and, by Schwann, of the animal tissues. 

 Virchow, after a series of observations and experiments, became con- 

 vinced that the cell had the power of propagating and multiplying 

 itself within the individual, and proved that it is the physical body 

 "with which the action of mechanical substance is connected, and 

 within which the latter can retain its functions, which alone justify 

 the name of life. Whatever outside of the cell acts upon it, works a 

 mechanical or chemical change within it, which change is disorder or 

 disease." The external cause may excite a reaction within the cell, 

 when it works as an irritant, or it may go without reaction, when it 



