DOGMATIC METHODS OF TEACHING. 77 



exact science, and he surely can never forgive himself 

 for having propounded this hypothesis which was 

 afterwards found to be not universally true as an 

 important doctrinal axiom. 



AVe shall indeed find much worse sins against his 

 own principles of to-day if we turn to Virchow's own 

 special department of science, namely, pathological 

 anatomy and physiology, the most important division 

 of theoretic medicine. The great and incomparable 

 services which Virchow here effected do not depend 

 on the numerous independent new facts which he 

 discovered, but on the theories and hypotheses by 

 which, like an inspired pioneer, he sought to open 

 a way through the dead waste of pathological know- 

 ledge and to form it into a living science. These new 

 theories and the hypotheses on which they were 

 founded, Virchow then propounded to us, his disciples, 

 with such incisive assurance that every one of us was 

 convinced of their truth ; and yet later experience has 

 shown that they were in part insufficiently proved and 

 in part wholly false. For example, I will only here 

 recall his famous theory of the connective-tissue, for 

 which I myself in several of my early works (1856 to 

 1858) broke a lance. His theory seemed to explain 

 a host of the most important physiological and patho- 

 logical phenomena in the simplest manner, and yet 

 it was afterwards proved to be false. In spite of 



