Supplement to “ Nature,” March 14, 1907 ill 
SUPPLEMENT s1O." NATURE,” 
VIRCHOW’S LETTERS TO HIS PARENTS. 
Rudolf Virchow, Briefe an Seine Eltern, 1839 bis 
1864. Edited by Marie Rabl, geb. Virchow. Pp. 
xi+244. (Leipzig: W. Engelmann, 1906.) Price 
5 marks. 
N an excellent and yet modest introduction to her 
father’s letters, Frau Rabl expresses the opinion 
that they have ‘‘almost the value of an autobio- 
graphy’’; in this she underestimates their worth, 
for even at the best an autobiography is but a picture 
drawn long after the early struggles are over, 
whereas we have here a picture painted as the events 
happened, and painted with a rare skill and un- 
common intimacy, because it was not drawn for the 
public gaze, but for his father’s eye. Even had Vir- 
chow become, as was originally intended, merely a 
surgeon in the army, and had he remained, as at 
one time he feared, simply a unit in the great average 
mass, these letters would still have a permanent value 
as an interesting record of student life in Berlin 
during the fourth decade of last century; but since 
they depict the struggles of youthful years which 
culminated in a triple triumph at the dawn of man- 
hood, they form indeed one of the most important 
contributions ever made to the study of great men. 
Before his thirtieth year Virchow had overthrown a 
speculative pathology which regarded disease as a 
manifestation of humours of the blood, and by the 
application of the methods used in the more exact 
sciences and the use of the microscope replaced it by 
one which rested on a solid foundation of fact. He 
had by then begun the study of the antiquities and 
people of his native province of Pomerania; by 
then he had thrown in his lot, at the risk of place 
and life, with the patriots who sought to curtail the 
autocracy of the crown and ameliorate the condition 
of the poor and oppressed. He was a_ splendid 
fighter, and he fought for truth and freedom in 
politics as well as in science. 
Virchow himself held the opinion that the key to a 
man’s mental development was not to be found in a 
study of the outward events, which everyone might 
see, but in an intimate knowledge of the inward 
events, which only the man himself could know. But 
even when these letters have supplied us with a know- 
ledge of both outward and inward events we are still 
at a loss to explain why it was that an only son of a 
small farmer in a Pomeranian village, who received 
the orthodox education of an army surgeon, became 
the Virchow we known in patholory, politics, and 
anthropology. Heredity scarcely helps us; his father, 
with the best will in the world, only succeeded in 
continually mismanaging his small farm, and was 
permanently in financial straits; his mother we can 
picture from a letter Virchow addressed to her while 
he was still a junior student in Berlin; in that he 
enjoins her to give over complaining of the hardness 
of fate—what she names fate, he says, is merely the 
1 
NO. 1050, VOL. 75] 
result of human deeds—and advises her to cease con- 
fiding her domestic troubles to chance acquaintances. 
Her love and meekness towards him were un- 
bounded. His uncle on his mother’s side 
architect of some repute in Berlin; his uncle on his 
father’s side laboured with success to improve the 
accoutrement of the Prussian soldier. 
The circumstances of Virchow’s youth resemble 
very closely those of Ruskin, except that Virchow’s 
father was a poor man. Both were only children; 
in both cases the father was the dominant partner 
and took elaborate pains to teach the child to observe ; 
in both cases the children, by the time they reached 
early manhood, had fixed their gaze on a universe 
while their fathers’ eyes never strayed far beyond the 
village pump; with the natural result that the 
intimate relationships between father and son became 
sorely strained. ‘‘ Only you misunderstand me,” the 
youthful Virchow writes to his father, “if you think 
my pride and self-confidence spring from my know- 
ledge; its blanks I know best; they spring from 
a consciousness that I desire better and greater 
things, and strive more earnestly for a full and com- 
plete mental life than most men.” His father had 
accused him of being self-conceited, egoistical, and 
wildly utopian. Much of the correspondence relates 
to finance and clothes. Virchow senior counsels the 
purchase of ready-made trousers; ~ everybody who 
knows advises me against them,’’ replies his son— 
and the son always took his own way. In his early 
student days he set his heart on a felt hat, but 
managed to jog along by borrowing one until the 
spring came, when the particular fashion of that year 
had declared itself, and he had accumulated sufficient 
funds for the purpose of purchasing a new one. 
“Tt jis sad to think,’’ he writes, ‘‘ that my whole 
future should hang on a seasonable fall of rain or 
a few weeks of good weather in the harvest.” 
Virchow never forgot the little farm. ‘‘ How does 
the corn look?’’ he continually asks; ‘‘are the 
meadows doing well?’’ Even when his name was 
known in all the capitals of Europe, he promises 
his father to be home in harvest to give him ‘a 
hand with his potatoes.” 
Some years ago the writer of this notice inquired 
into the circumstances which led to young men tak- 
ing up the study of medicine. In seven cases out 
of one hundred the reason was found to be that 
medicine was the only means of livelihood open to 
them which gave an opportunity of continuing a 
study of the natural sciences—especially botany and 
natural history. That was the reason which led 
Virchow to the study of medicine; at school the 
natural sciences were the hobbies of his spare hours. 
Things have changed since Virchow’s day; nearly 
all the men who occupied the chairs of chemistry, 
botany, and natural history were then trained for 
medicine; nowadays one may hove to make a liveli- 
hood as well as a hobby of them. 
One is surprised to find so little mention of 
Johannes Miiller in these letters; his was the master 
mind among Virchow’s teachers. He mustered 
amone his pupils all the men who made Berlin a 
x2 
Was an 
