1 8 CERTAIN EVIDENCE OF 



the eight years when he resided in Wiirzburg, from 

 1848 to 1856. There Yirchow, with all the keenness 

 of his youthful intellect, with a sacred enthusiasm 

 for scientific truth, with indefatigable powers of work 

 and the rarest insight, worked out that glorious reform 

 of scientific medicine which will shine through all 

 time as a star of the first magnitude in the history 

 of medical science. In Wiirzburg, Yirchow elaborated 

 that comprehensive application of the cellular theory 

 to pathology which culminates in the conception that 

 the cell is an independent living elementary organism, 

 and that our human organism, like that of all the 

 higher animals, is merely a congeries of cells a 

 highly fertile conception, which Virchow now denies 

 as resolutely as he then supported it. In "VViirzburg, 

 twenty-five years since, I sat devoutly at his feet, and 

 received from him with enthusiasm that clear and 

 simple doctrine of the mechanics of all vital activity 

 a truly monistic doctrine, which Yirchow now 

 undoubtedly opposes where formerly he defended it. 

 In Wiirzburg, finally, he wrote those incomparable 

 critical and historical leading articles which are the 

 ornament of the first ten yearly series of his 

 " Archives " of pathological anatomy. All that 

 Yirchow effected as the great pioneer of reform in 

 medicine, and by which he won imperishable honour 



