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EUDOLPH VIKCHOW. 18211902. 



Eudolph Virchow was born of humble parents at Schivelbein, in 

 the Pomeranian province of the kingdom of Prussia, October 13, 1821. 

 In 1839 he became a student in the Academy of Military Medicine 

 in Berlin. Here he came under the powerful influence of Johannes 

 Muller, who was the intellectual father of many other leaders of 

 scientific thought. 



After completing his course in 1844, Virchow escaped the army by 

 becoming assistant to Froriep in the post-mortem room of the Charite , 

 .and two years later succeeded him as prosector. The fact that he had 

 already given evidence of radical opinions in politics did not help his 

 academical course in the eventful year 1848, and a few months later 

 {May, 1849) he gladly accepted a call from Wiirzburg to be Professor of 

 Pathological Anatomy. Here he published several original papers, 

 and founded his famous " Archiv f. path. Anat. u. Phys. u. fur kl. 

 Med." The early death of his colleague, Eeinhardt, left him the sole 

 editor in 1852, and he continued in office until his death. The 

 remarkable results of his early investigations at Berlin and Wiirzburg 

 particularly those on thrombosis and embolism, on the white corpuscles 

 and Leuchaemia, on coagulation and on cretinism were reprinted 

 from the " Archiv " and other periodicals in 1855, and published, with 

 a well-deserved dedication to Eobert Froriep, and a characteristic 

 introduction, in which the young pathologist dealt with the attempt to 

 bring about unity in the domain of scientific medicine. In 53 pages 

 he discusses the brain and the will, consciousness and self-consciousness, 

 anthropology and " humanism," the multiplication and heredity of 

 cells, the origin of life, medicine and disease, cellular pathology, 

 heredity, and infection. 



A considerable part of this volume is occupied with memoirs on 

 the pathology of the foetus, and on pregnancy and uterine disorders, 

 a department to which he had been directed while at Berlin by Carl 

 Meyer, whose daughter he married. Although Virchow's " Archiv " 

 was more and more confined to pathology, the subject of clinical 

 medicine continues to appear on the title to the present day, and the 

 editor never quite relinquished the privileges and duties of a 

 physician, particularly in prescribing for his assistants. In 1847, 

 before he left Berlin, he was sent by the Prussian Government to 

 investigate a terrible epidemic of what was then called typhus, but 

 while the disease now known by that name (Typhus maculosus, or spotted 



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