The New International Encyclopædia/Virchow, Rudolf
VIRCHOW, vḗr'Kṓ,  (1821-1902). An
eminent German pathologist, anthropologist, and
scholar, born at Schivelbein, Prussia. He was
graduated in medicine in Berlin and became
prosector of anatomy in the faculty, sharing the
companionship of Henle, Schwann, Brücke, Helmholtz,
Du Bois-Reymond, and other scholars who
were destined to become distinguished discoverers
of important medical facts. He became, in 1847,
lecturer at the University of Berlin. Soon afterwards
he was commissioned by the Government to
investigate the cause and cure of typhus in Silesia.
He founded, at this time, the Archiv für
pathologische Anatomie und Physiologie, of which he
remained editor till his death, and which is
celebrated the world over as “Virchow's
Archives.” The political commnotions of 1848
dragged him, in common with many other
votaries of science, into the revolutionary vortex.
He established a journal entitled the Medical
Reformer, and also a democratic club, where he
soon distinguished himself as an orator. On
account of his political opinions. Virchow lost his
post in 1849, and, though reinstated afterwards,
he accepted in the same year a call to
the chair of pathological anatomy in Würzburg.
His lectures at that university were widely
popular for the novel views which he advanced,
particularly in cellular pathology. His reputation
grew so great that he was recalled
in 1856 to Berlin, where he re-occupied
the chair of pathological anatomy, and rendered
it the most famous of its kind in Kurope. In
1859 he became a member of the Municipal Council
of Berlin, where he distinguished himself as a
reformer of the arbitrary police system then
rampant. In 1862 he was chosen Deputy to the
Prussian Diet, and soon rose to the leadership of
the opposition, and proved a most effective
antagonist
of the encroachments made in name of
the royal prerogative. He was one of the founders
of the Fortschrittspartei (Progressists), and
both as such and as a subsequent member of the
deutsch-freisinnige party he was one of the most
prominent figures of the German Reichstag from
1880 to 1893.

The first edition of his master-work, Cellular-pathologie,
was published in 1858, and attracted
at once the attention and admiration, and later
won the acceptance of the medical world,
displacing the former pathological systems and
theories for all time. (See .) His
views were so clear, his theory so perfect, and
his grasp of the matter so comprehensive that
his fame was at once assured. His work upon
tumors is of especial value, as it holds the practical
and clinical aspects of the matter as of
prime importance — a circumstance that is
remarkable in view of the fact that Virchow was
not a practitioner of medicine. His views
combated the pessimistic theories of Rokitansky and
the prevailing Vienna school of pathologists. His
work in pathology is distinctly a creation,
establishing the biologic principle that the laws
working in disease are not different from those
in operation in health, though subject to
different conditions. The cellular theory was
finally established in 1858. During the wars of
1866 and 1870-71, Virchow devoted himself to
arranging, equipping and drilling hospital corps
and ambulance squads, and directed the
management of numbers of hospital trains, also taking
charge of the immense Berlin military
hospital, as well as of the sanitary arrangements
of the troops in the field. The Franco-Prussian
War ended, Virchow became a member of the
Sanitary Bureau of the city of Berlin, with its
problem of the disposal of sewage, neither of the
two little streams near it being capable of
receiving and transporting the refuse. Under his
direction immense sewage farms were
established after such a plan that they have kept pace
in adequateness with the tremendous growth of
the city, while the revenue from them is sufficient
to meet and defray the expense of their
maintenance.

Virchow was also distinguished as an archæologist.
His advice and learning were of great
advantage to Schliemann in the latter's researches
in Hissarlik, and in the plains of ancient Troy.
Archæological anthropology gained much from
his description of the bones found in the graves
at Koban.

On October 13, 1901, upon the celebration
of his eightieth anniversary, at a
complimentary dinner in Berlin, a Festschrift was
presented to him by a score of former students.
Simultaneously testimonial dinners were given
in other cities, notably New York and Chicago,
in the United States, at which many physicians
vied with each other in recounting the discoveries
and sounding their praises of the great
scientist, teacher, physician, and legislator.

Perhaps Virchow's greatest material monument
is the Pathological Institute and Museum
in Berlin, erected by the Government in accordance
with his desires. It contained 23,000
specimens at the time of his death, and by far
surpasses all similar collections in the world.

He was a very voluminous writer. Among
his works are Mittheilungen über die
Typhus-Epidemie
(Berlin, 1848); Die Cellularpathologie
(ib., 1858; trans., London, 1860); Handbuch der
speciellen Pathologie und Therapie (ib., 1854-62);
Vorlesungen über Pathologie (ib., 1862-72);
Die krankhaften Geschwülste (ib., 1863-67). He
also published many works on various topics,
such as the gorilla, plague in its relations to
public health, Goethe, Johannes Müller, spedalska
(a disease peculiar to the Norwegian coasts),
etc. Consult his Life by Beecher (Berlin, 1891).