652 RUDOLPH VIRCHOW, 1821-1902. 



A 3^ear before Vii'chow left Wiirzburg he had coined the word "cel- 

 lular-pathology'' which briefl}^ designates the nature of his life w^ork. " 

 The researches of the previous years, in particular those upon the 

 connective tissues, had graduall}' brought to light the principle which 

 was to occupy the place before shared by patholog}" and general medi- 

 cine. But it was not till Felu-uarv, March, and April of 1858 that Vir- 

 chow delivered before an audience composed chiefly of the medical 

 men of Berlin the twenty lectures w'hich he published in the same year 

 under the title "'Cellular ]mthology as founded upon the ])hysiology 

 and pathology of tissues."^ 



When Virchow commenced his scientific career, the art of medicine 

 was under the stamp of dili'erent systems, pathology being dominated 

 by Rokitansky, the great pathological anatomist of Vienna. He was 

 the founder of the so-called Viennese school of pathology and had 

 given to it a doctrine of dyscrasia, constructed like its predecessors on 

 a priori rather than experimental grounds. Although excellent in the 

 descriptions of diseased conditions and well grounded in its anatom}^, 

 as Virchow readily admitted, yet the third volume of Rokitansk^^'s 

 hand})ook of pathologic anatomy completely ignored the method of 

 exact research. He remained in the error of speculation, reviving the 

 old humoral pathology in his theory, and attributing all diseases to 

 impurity of the blood, from which they were connmmicated to the 

 solid parts of the l)ody. According to this doctrine these latter were 

 practically excluded from pathologic considerations, while on the other 

 hand under the rule of the doctrines of solid pathology the opposite 

 had been the case, liokitansky had made little use of the microscope, 

 an instrument first introduced in pathologic studies near the end of 

 the eighteenth century ly the great Frenchman Bichat and used 

 increasingly in Virchow's program with the efl'ect, as he says,'' "of 

 bringing the path of general medicine at least three hundred times as 

 close to the natural course of procedure." The figure, of course, 

 refers to the magnifying power then employed. A\'e now use powers 

 at least three times as high, l)ut a power of three hundred would suf- 

 fice readily to disclose the elements of animal structure ^vliicli corres- 

 pond to the generally much larger cells of plants. 



Moreover, the discoveries of Schleiden and Schwann had come to 

 recognition, and the anatomists l)egan to think of cells, although the 

 conception of the origin of single cells expressed in Schwann's "Th«>orv 

 of free cell building'' was by no means the true one. Accoi'ding to 

 this theory the cells arose from a condensation of matter, or blastema, 



^'Archiv, vol. 8, ]>]>. 3-.'>;». 



''Berlin 1858. The second edition apjicarfd in isr)!),tlie tliirdwitii niaiiy ad<li- 

 tions in 1801, the fovirth rewritten and jrnatlv cidartrcd in 1S71. 



<^()n tlie reform of jiatholoijicand tlierapinitic dcuKinstration ))y inicroscopic inves- 

 tigation.s. Archiv, vol. 1, j). 255. 



