3>i 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XVI 1 1. No. 461 



Professor Osborn has shown that grass insects destroy 

 much produce. He estimates that the small leaf-hoppers 

 {Jassidce) destroy as much food from two acres of pasture 

 as would feed one head of stock. From recent experiments 

 he has found that it is possible by the use of hopperdozers 

 to reduce the numbers of these insects so materially that, 

 upon two plots chosen for their similarity of the conditions 

 of the growth, the amount of hay produced upon a plot 

 which was once treated with the hopperdozer was 34 per 

 cent greater than upon the corresponding untreated plot. 



VIRCHOW, THE MAN AND THE STUDENT.' 



By his commission the physician is sent to the sick, and, know- 

 ing in his calling neither Jew nor Gentile, bond or free, perhaps 

 he alone rises superior to those differences which sepai-ate and 

 make us dwell apart, too often oblivious to the common hopes 

 and common frailties which should bind us together as a race. In 

 his prcifessional relations, though divided by national lines, there 

 remains the feeling tliat . e belongs to a Guild which owes no local 

 allegiance, which has neither king nor country, but whose work 

 is in the world. The iE-culapian temple has given place to the 

 hospital, and the priestly character of tlie physician has vanished 

 with the ages; still there is left with us a strong feeling of broth- 

 erhood, a sense of unity, whicli the limitations of language, race, 

 and country have not been able to efface. So it has seemed meet 

 and right to gather here this evening to do honor to a man — not 

 of this country, not of our blood — whose life has been spent in 

 the liighesl interests of humanity, whose special work has revolu- 

 tionized the science of medicine, whose genius has shed lustre 

 upon our craft. 



The century now drawing to a close has seen the realization of 

 much that the wise of old longed for, much of whicli the earnest 

 spirits of the past had dreamt. It has been a century of release 

 — a time of the loosening of bands and bond.«; and medicine, too, 

 after a long enslavement, ecclesiastical and philosophical, received 

 its emancipation. Forsaking the traditions of the elders, and 

 scouting the Shibboleth of schools and sects, she has at last put 

 off the garments of her pride, and with the reed of humility in her 

 hand sits at the feet of her mistress, the new science. Not to any 

 one man can this revolution be ascribed ; the Zeit-geist was po- 

 tent, and like a leaven worked even in unwilling minds; but no 

 physician of our time has done more to promote the change, or by 

 his individual efforts to win his generation to accept it, than Ru- 

 dolph Virohow. 



And now, as the shadows lengthen, and ere the twilight deep- 

 ens, it has seemed right to his many pupils and friends, the world 

 over, to show their love by a gathering in his honor, on this his 

 seventieth birthday. To-day, in Berlin, a Fest has been held, in 

 which several hundred members of the profession in this and 

 other countries have been participants, as subscribers to the fund 

 which was organized for the occasion. It seemed weU, also, to 

 his pupils who are teachers in this university, and to others, that 

 the event should be marked by a reunion at which we could tell 

 over the story of his life, rejoice in his career, and express the 

 gratitude which we on this side of the Atlantic feel to the great 

 German physician. 



Let me first lay before you a brief outline of his life: 



Rudolph Virchow was born Oct. 13, 1821, at Schivelbein, a 

 small town in Pomerania. Details of his family and of bis child- 

 hood, which would be so interesting to us, are not available. 

 Educated at the Gymnasium in Berlin, he left it at Easter, 1839, 

 to begin his medical studies, and graduated from the university of 

 that city in 1848. The following year he became assistant in 

 pathological anatomy to Froriep; and in 1846 he was made pro- 

 sector, and in 1847 a lecturer at the university. In 1849, on ac- 

 count of his active participation in the political events of the pre- 

 vious year, he was dismissed from his university positions, and, 

 as he mentions, was only mit grossen beschriiiikungen reinstated, 



' .\ddres3 by William Osier, M.D., professor of medicine in the Jolins Hop- 

 kins University, on the seventieth birthday of Professor Virchow, Oct. 13, at 

 Baltimore. 



largely, in fact, by the efforts by the profession of Berlin, and 

 particularly of the medical societies. In August, 1849, he received 

 a call to the chair of pathological anatomy at Wurzburg, a posi- 

 tion which he held until 1856, when, by the una imous vote of 

 the faculty, he was recommended for, and received the appoint- 

 ment which he still holds, namely, professor of pathological anat- 

 omy at Berlin. Prior to leaving Berlin he founded, in 1847, his- 

 celebrated Archiv, now in its one hundred and twenty-eighth vol- 

 ume, which is the greatest storehouse of facts in scientific medi- 

 cine possessed by us to day. 



Externally, at least, an uneventful, quiet, peacable life with 

 few changes. 



As an illustration of the successful pursuit of various callings^ 

 Virchow's career is without parallel in our profession, and this- 

 many-sidedness adds greatly to the interest of his life. Dr. 

 Welch nill speak of his special labors in the science of pathology; 

 and other aspects will be considered by Dr. Chew and Dr. Fried- 

 enwald. I propose to indicate briefly a few traits in his life as ai 

 man of science and as a citizen. 



From the days of the great Stageirite, who, if he never prac- 

 tised medicine, was at least an asclepiad and an anatomist, the 

 intimate relation of medicine with science, has in no way been 

 better shown than in the long array of physicians who have be- 

 come distinguished in biological studies. Until the gradual dif- 

 ferentiation of subjects, necessitated by the rapid growth of 

 knowledge, the physician, as a matter of course, was a naturalist; 

 and in the present era, from Galen to Huxley, the brightest minds 

 of the profession in all countries have turned towards science as 

 a recreation or as a pursuit. Alas! that in the present generation,. 

 with its strong bent toward specinlism, this combination seems 

 more and more impossible. We miss nov the quickening spirit 

 and the wiser insight that come with work in a wide field ; and 

 in the great cities of this country we look in vain among practis- 

 ing physicians for successors of Jacob Bigelow of Boston. Holmes 

 of Montreal, Barton of Philadelphia, and others — men who- 

 maintained in this matter an honorable tradition, whose names 

 live in natural history societies and academies of natural science,, 

 in the founding of which they were mainly instrumental. 



In anthropology and archaeology the name of Rudolph Virobow is 

 almost as well known as it is in medicine. Very early in his 

 work we find evidences of this bent in the memorable studies, now 

 forty years ago, on cretins and on the development of the skull. 

 Not a year has pas.-ied since that time without some notable con- 

 tribution from him on these subjects ; and those of us who know 

 only his professional side may well marvel at the industry of the 

 man whose name is quoted and appears in anthropological mem- 

 oirs and journals as often as in our technical works. In recogni- 

 tion of his remarkable labors in this department, a special an- 

 thropological institute was organized in 1881, on the occasion of 

 the twenty-fifth year of his professoriate. In 1884, on returning- 

 to Berlin for the first time since my student days, I took with me 

 four choice examples of skulls of British Columbian Indians, 

 knowing well how acceptable they would be. In his room at the 

 Pathological Institute, surrounded by crania and skeletons, and 

 directing his celebrated diener, who was mending Trojan pottery, 

 I found the professor noting the peculiarities of a set of bones 

 which be had just received from Madeira. Not ihe warm thanks, 

 nor the cheerful, greeting which he always had for an old student, 

 pleased me half so much as the prompt and decisive identification 

 of the skulls which I had brought, and his rafiid sketch of the 

 cranial characters of the North American Indian. The profound 

 expert, not the dilettante student, has characterized all of his 

 work in this line. Even an enumeration with a brief report of 

 his published writings in anthropological and archaeological sub- 

 jects would take more time than has been allotted to me. Of his 

 relations with Schliemann I must say something, which I could 

 not do so well as in the words used by his friend, Dr. Jacobi, ten 

 years ago: "Schliemann, by whose modern witchcraft holy old 

 Troy is just leaving its tomb, invited Virchow to aid him in his 

 work of discovery of the buried city. He went — partly to aid, 

 partly, as he says, to escape from overwhelming labors at home — 

 only to be engrossed in just as hard work, though of a different 

 nature. In regard to the latter, Schliemann's recent book on 



