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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LII. No. 1349 



logical chemistry, pathological anatomy and 

 physiology; and it may be asked to what pur- 

 pose and for what ultimate end? The answer 

 is, in order to be ready to study with Virchow, 

 whose institute he had visited during a short 

 stay in Berlin. This exi)ectation was indeed 

 the force back of the concentration on normal 

 histology, the reason for embracing eagerly a 

 histological problem from Ludwig, the motive 

 in following Wagner's autopsy and micro- 

 scopic courses; and, after all, the wish was to 

 be frustrated and Welch's activities were to 

 be directed along a wholly new direction and 

 into fresh channels. 



The new impulse came from Ludwig who 

 did not share the enthusiasm, at least in the 

 overwhelming degree then current, for the 

 cellular pathology of the period. Perhaps 

 this response was the less hearty because he 

 did not have the strong sense, as so many 

 seemed to have, of a gi-eat innovation, but 

 rather viewed Virchow's doctrines as the ex- 

 tension, perhaps even the consummation, of 

 the earlier conceptions and discoveries of 

 Schwann, Schleiden, Remak and Eeichert; or 

 possibly it was his physiological bias or even 

 a subtler appreciation of the impending in- 

 fluence of the study of fimction on the growth 

 of pathology, which led him to induce Welch 

 to alter his plans and to offer himself to the 

 brilliant young pathologist Cohnheim to whom 

 he undertook to write urging him to receive 

 Welch and to furnish him with a rewarding 

 (lohnendes) theme. 



This choice proved highly fortunate. As 

 one review's Welch's own published work, his 

 immediate influence on his students, or the 

 more general effect which his career has had 

 on medical education, it is now quite obvious 

 that his intellectual temper was of the order 

 called dynamic, and his vigorous responses 

 were to concepts built on facts of function 

 far more than of form and structure. The 

 summer semester of 1877 with Cohnheim in 

 Breslau was perhaps the most delightful and 

 satisfying of all the time Welch spent abroad ; 

 and fortunately we jKJssess a pen picture of 

 him at that particular time, drawn in clear 

 and sympathetic lines. 



Salomonsen, afterwards professor of pathol- 

 ogy at Copenhagen and the present ISTestor of 

 medicine in Denmark, had also come to 

 Breslau for the summer semester. The two 

 foreign students, the first foreigners who 

 studied with Cohnheim, were at once thrown 

 together; there existed, indeed, that subtle 

 quality in the temperaments of the two men 

 that quickly made for close association and 

 then intimate friendship — a rare relation 

 which neither distance nor fleeting years have 

 severed. Salomonsen states that the two men 

 who most influenced his own life were Carl 

 Weigert and William H. Welch. He goes on 

 to enlarge and say that he and Welch had 

 many points of contact: both were sons of 

 physicians, both on return to their own 

 countries hoped to become pathologists to 

 municipal hospitals, and both regarded it as a 

 matter of course that any one wishing to 

 enter on the career of pathologist should 

 aspire to work under Cohnheim. 



The two foreigners were proud of the dis- 

 tinction — what two eager young men would 

 not be? — of being the only foreigners in the 

 laboratory among such present or prospective 

 stars as Weigert, Ehrlich, Lassar, Lichtheim, 

 Albert ISTeisser, Senftleben and O. Rosenbach. 

 They were always together — from early morn- 

 ing to late afternoon — and they were taken up 

 cordially by their German colleagues of whose 

 intimate circle they made a part. I venture 

 to quote a particularly appropriate paragraph 

 from Salomonsen : 



That by accident I should have found so gifted 

 a man and investigator as Welch in Breslau, I at 

 that time, as well as later, regarded as the greatest 

 good luck. Cohnheim knew well how to appreciate 

 Welch, and he recommended him for the professor- 

 ship of pathology at the Johns Hopkins University 

 where Welch exerted a profound influence on the 

 development of medical education in the United 

 States, and where the present generation of Ameri- 

 can pathologists call him master. 



It was in this remarkable atmosphere that 

 Welch spent a precious semester. The work 

 of the laboratory was pretty sharply divided 

 between the autopsies conducted mostly by 

 Weigert, and the experimental investigations 



