RUDOLPH VIRCHOW, 1S21-1!)02. <)47 



fourteen articles Vireliow contributed eight, ay])eare(l in the course of 

 the year 1847, the second in 1849. Both editors had hecii carried 

 awa\' })y the political storm of 1848, and thus the regular progress of 

 their work was interrupted, but, notwithstanding this, Virchow and 

 Leubusoher started in the interim the Medizinische Reform, a weekly 

 periodical, whose tirst number appeared July 10, 1848, and whose last 

 num])er, 52, was dated June 29, 1840. It was a lighting sheet, which 

 had for its object general reform in the care of health. 



This work for reform was the main result of the journey to Upper 

 Silesia, which Virchow had ])egun with the Geheimen Obermedizi- 

 nalrat, Barez, on February 2t>, 1847, at the behest of the Prussian 

 ministry, to study the epidemic of typhus fever which had broken out 

 there in the summer of 1846. He returned to Berlin on March 10, 

 Barez having preceded him on February 29. This journey is become 

 famous from Virchow's report, which soon after appeared under the 

 title, ''^Mitteiiungen iibcr die in Oberschlcsian herschende Typhus- 

 epidemie."" Virchow had been charged by the authorities with ''the 

 investigation of the scientitic signilicance of the nature of the epi- 

 demic." But l)esides a pathologic, anatomic, and clinical investigation 

 of sick and dead, which would have satistied any other investigator, 

 the report contains much more. He gives a monograph on the con- 

 ditions of society in Upper Silesia in which the whole social and 

 educational history of the province is set forth, and makes proposals 

 for the treatment of the contagion. Painstaking accuracy, warm- 

 hearted sympathy and courageous frankness are ever^'where in evi- 

 dence. Virchow recognized that the common medicines and dietetic 

 regulations suitable to sporadic cases were of little avail against the 

 epidemic; and that the endemic disease owed its dangerous spreading 

 character to the deplorable social conditions; the ignorance of people 

 and authorities alike favoring the diffusion of contagious matter, and 

 all contributing to diminish the resistance of individuals to contagion. 

 Only through radical political and social reform, he maintained, could 

 there come an effectual remedy. The same matter which the Paris 

 Academie de Medecine had brought to the attention of the Egyptian 

 Government he laid l)efore the authorities in the following terms: 

 "The logical answer to the (piestion of the prevention in future of 

 conditions similar to tho>^e we now see in Upper Sil(\sia is tlierefore 

 easy, and is simply this: Education, with her two daughters, freedom 

 and prosperity." This measure whicli he here adxocatcs led to the 

 development of a thoroughly democratic programme. In his t'ornuda- 

 tion of it, there were, to l)esiire, some fantastic features resulting from 

 the disturl)ecl condition of th(^ times, but in the struggle of the next 

 ten years not a little of it was adopted. The present l)eneticent 



" Archiv, vol. 2, Nos. 1 and 2, pp. 14:S-322, 1847. Also Berlin, 1848. 



