Rudolf Virchow

Rudolf Ludwig Karl Virchow , born the October 13rd 1821 in Schivelbein (today Swidwin), in Poméranie, deceased the September 5th 1902 with Berlin) is a doctor pathologist and German politician , considered as one of the founders of the pathological anatomy modern. It carried out the essence of its career to the hospital of the Charity of Berlin, being made the promoter of a medicine strictly directed towards the Natural science. As a politician, it was one of the representatives of the Parti German progressist.

Biography

It made its studies with Berlin where he was the pupil of Schönlein. After having finished its studies of medicine, it passed a doctorate of Pathologie in 1843, with a thesis entitled Of rheumate praesertim corneae constant at the hospital of the Charity of Berlin. He was stock-broker of the military academy of medicine of Berlin “the Seedbed”. Then, he worked with the service of dissection of the hospital of Charity. In 1848 it took an active part in the revolution of March what made intolerable its situation to Berlin and forced it to accept a call to the Université of Würzburg. Moreover other Universities, whose ETH (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule) of Zurich, had proposed a pulpit to him.

Virchow taught starting from 1849 at the University of Würzburg. In 1856 it returned to Berlin and dealt with the pulpit of ordinary professor of pathology lately created at the same time as it found his old position with the service of dissection of Charity where there were to remain 46 years until his death. It developed the existing anatomical pathological collection, and since 1899, this one could be visited by the public with the pathological museum lately built. It is today the historical museum of medicine of Berlin at the hospital of Charity.

In 1858, it published its theory of the cellular pathology according to which the diseases have their origins in deteriorations of the cells of the body. This discovery brought a world famous to him. Moreover, he worked as historian of medicine and published much and in various reviews. Until its death he regularly visited Solbad de Bad Durkheim, promised with the more bright future, to follow a grape cure there (grape cure) and bound friendship with the doctor of the district, the doctor Philipp Veit Kaufmann (1758-1838). Its monument is in the old cemetery St Matthieu in Berlin-Schöneberg.

Medicine and social question

Rudolf Virchow also wanted that one occupied oneself with medical government stock of the population. “Medicine is a social science, and the policy is nothing more than the medicine practiced into large. ” It is in Virchow that one owes the creation of the first communal hospitals in Berlin, as in Friedrichshain (1874), in Moabit (1875, closed since), without forgetting the private clinic Am Urban (1890). Parks and playing fields were to also improve the situation of the urban proletariat.

Hygiene and prevention of the diseases

Virchow also worked in a practical way like hygienist; in this quality he advised the German and foreign governments in questions of epidemics. He dealt with returning the research of the obligatory trichine to Prussia.

The assembly of the naturalists and the German doctors devoted itself to the question of waste water at the time of the conference of Dresden in 1868. Virchow was in favor of the drainage by sewers, contrary to Georg Varrentrap, doctor in Frankfurt which decided for a removal and a use as manure. Association between James Hobrecht and Virchow, since 1869, was decisive so that Berlin accepted in the years a 1870 mains drainage and a central supply drinking water. The drainage of the city was done by more than twelve independent radial systems which carried out towards sewage farms apart from the city, it was the most suitable solution at the time for the drainage of waste water.

The politician

Virchow took part in the revolution of March 1848. In 1861, he was founding member and president of the Parti German progressist. Its goal was “freedom, with his/her daughters: education and wellbeing”. He pled for a liberal company and a social medicine which were to be the consequences of progress in sciences of nature.

From 1861 up to 1902 he was member of the municipal council of Berlin, where he worked for the construction of hospital, markets hall and a slaughter-house in conformity with the rules of hygiene (in 1881 was built the central cattle pen). Its most important project was the planning of a modern mains drainage for the city.

From 1862 to 1902 it belonged to House of Commons of Prussia. In 1869 he asked that one restrict the military expenditure of the Confederation of Germany of North, that one worked with general disarmament with payment of the conflicts by international arbitrations and that the United States of Europe was created.

At the same time, of 1880 up to 1893, Virchow was member of the Reichstag where it worked especially that the State took care officially health. In policy it was the solved adversary of Bismarck, which caused it even in duel (but the duel never took place). He fought for the administrative autonomy of the communes and the rights of minorities, among which the Poles, very many in Prussia; and it fought in a solved way the tendencies anti-semites. It was hardly in favor of the colonial policy.

The archeologist

Its interests being very broad it still dealt with questions of anthropology, ethnology and archeology. He was the friend and the guard of Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890). With Adolf Bastian (1826-1905) and R. Hartmann, it founded in November 1869 the Company of anthropology of Berlin, renamed later Société of anthropology, ethnology and prehistory of Berlin; the foundation of the German Company for anthropology, the ethnology and prehistory followed in 1870. It was the first to be distinguished between Slavic ceramics (of rampart type from castle-extremely) and that of the Bronze Age (of lusacian type) and it thus encouraged research on the ramparts of the castle-forts.

It was associated with the foundation of several museums of Berlin, inter alia the museum of ethnology (Landstrasse 8, Berlin-Dahlem), the provincial museum of the Walk of Brandebourg in Berlin and the museum of ethnology. It is thanks to him that Heinrich Schliemann left at the town of Berlin its collection discovered in Troy.

Its scientific errors

Owing to the fact that it seemed to contradict its cellular pathology, he was very skeptic vis-a-vis the Microbiologie which claimed to explain the causes of the diseases. He looked at the theory of the evolution of Darwin like an interesting construction of the spirit, but it did not impassion it pas.
In 1874 it wrote that the Préhistoire had never been a speciality and would undoubtedly become it never. Virchow fought the seniority of the Homme of Néandertal: it saw only one recent pathological case there and until its death refused to admit that it could be a question of a prehistoric man: if it were not mistaken as for nature in the pathologies detected on the studied specimen, it had not classified the man of Néandertal like pertaining to a species different of Homo sapiens.
Like much of other representatives of the medical Establishment , finally, Virchow believed by no means in the relation established by Semmelweis between the dissections practiced by the obstetricians and the Fièvre puerpérale.

Virchow also thought that the formation of the follicules of Graaf was controlled by the nervous system.

Philately

It is commemorated by a philatelic emission in Eastern Germany in Soviet zone of occupation of 1948 on a stamp of 25 p.

External bond

Short bibliographical biography and reference to the numerical sources in project VLP of the Institute max Planck of history of sciences

Source

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