, now in Poland In 1839, he received a military fellowship, a scholarship for gifted children from poor families to become army surgeons, to study medicine at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin (now
Humboldt University of Berlin). He was most influenced by
Johannes Peter Müller, his doctoral advisor. Virchow defended his doctoral thesis titled
De rheumate praesertim corneae (corneal manifestations of rheumatic disease) on 21 October 1843. Immediately on graduation, he became subordinate physician to Müller. But shortly after, he joined the Charité Hospital in Berlin for internship. In 1844, he was appointed as medical assistant to the prosector (pathologist) Robert Froriep, from whom he learned
microscopy which interested him in pathology. Froriep was also the editor of an abstract journal that specialised in foreign work, which inspired Virchow for scientific ideas of France and England. Virchow published his first scientific paper in 1845, giving the earliest known pathological descriptions of
leukemia. He passed the medical licensure examination in 1846 and immediately succeeded Froriep as hospital prosector at the Charité. In 1847, he was appointed to his first academic position with the rank of
privatdozent. Because his articles did not receive favourable attention from German editors, he founded
Archiv für Pathologische Anatomie und Physiologie und für Klinische Medicin (now known as
Virchows Archiv) with a colleague Benno Reinhardt in 1847. He edited alone after Reinhardt's death in 1852 till his own. He returned to Berlin on 10 March 1848, and only eight days later, a revolution broke out against the government in which he played an active part. To fight political injustice he helped found
Die Medizinische Reform (Medical Reform), a weekly newspaper for promoting social medicine, in July of that year. The newspaper ran under the banners "medicine is a social science" and "the physician is the natural attorney of the poor". Political pressures forced him to terminate the publication in June 1849, and he was expelled from his official position. In November 1848, he was given an academic appointment and left Berlin for the University of Würzburg to hold Germany's first chair of pathological anatomy. During his seven-year period there, he concentrated on his scientific work, including detailed studies of venous thrombosis and cellular theory. His first major work there was a six-volume
Handbuch der speciellen Pathologie und Therapie (Handbook on Special Pathology and Therapeutics) published in 1854. In 1856, he returned to Berlin to become the newly created Chair for Pathological Anatomy and Physiology at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-University, as well as Director of the newly built Institute for Pathology on the premises of the Charité. He held the latter post for the next 20 years.
Cell biology Virchow is credited with several key discoveries. His most widely known scientific contribution is his
cell theory, which built on the work of
Theodor Schwann. He was one of the first to accept the work of
Robert Remak, who showed that the origin of cells was the division of pre-existing cells. He did not initially accept the evidence for cell division and believed that it occurs only in certain types of cells. When it dawned on him in 1855 that Remak might be right, he published Remak's work as his own, causing a falling-out between the two. Virchow was particularly influenced in cellular theory by the work of
John Goodsir of Edinburgh, whom he described as "one of the earliest and most acute observers of cell-life both physiological and pathological". Virchow dedicated his
magnum opus Die Cellularpathologie to Goodsir. Virchow's cellular theory was encapsulated in the epigram
Omnis cellula e cellula ("all cells (come) from cells"), which he published in 1855. (The
epigram was actually coined by
François-Vincent Raspail, but popularized by Virchow.) It is a rejection of the concept of spontaneous generation, which held that organisms could arise from nonliving matter. For example, maggots were believed to appear spontaneously in decaying meat;
Francesco Redi carried out experiments that disproved this notion and coined the maxim
Omne vivum ex ovo ("Every living thing comes from a living thing" — literally "from an egg"); Virchow (and his predecessors) extended this to state that the only source for a living cell was another living cell, and the notion became popularly known as the theory of "biogenesis".
Cancer In 1845, Virchow and
John Hughes Bennett independently observed abnormal increases in white blood cells in some patients. Virchow correctly identified the condition as a blood disease, and named it
leukämie in 1847 (later anglicised to
leukemia). In 1857, he was the first to describe a type of
tumour called
chordoma that originated from the
clivus (at the base of the skull).
Theory of cancer origin Virchow was the first to correctly link the origin of cancers from otherwise normal cells. (His teacher Müller had proposed that cancers originated from cells, but from special cells, which he called blastema.) In 1855, he suggested that cancers arise from the activation of dormant cells (perhaps similar to cells now known as
stem cells) present in mature tissue. Virchow believed that cancer is caused by severe irritation in the tissues, and his theory came to be known as chronic irritation theory. He thought, rather wrongly, that the irritation spread in the form of liquid so that cancer rapidly increases. His theory was largely ignored, as he was proved wrong that it was not by liquid, but by
metastasis of the already cancerous cells that cancers spread. (Metastasis was first described by
Karl Thiersch in the 1860s.) He made a crucial observation that certain cancers (
carcinoma in the modern sense) were inherently associated with white blood cells (which are now called
macrophages) that produced irritation (
inflammation). It was only towards the end of the 20th century that Virchow's theory was taken seriously. It was realised that specific cancers (including those of
mesothelioma, lung, prostate, bladder, pancreatic, cervical, esophageal,
melanoma, and head and neck) are indeed strongly associated with long-term inflammation. In addition it became clear that prolonged use of anti-inflammatory drugs, such as
aspirin, reduced cancer risk. Experiments also show that drugs that block inflammation simultaneously inhibit tumour formation and development.
The Kaiser's case Virchow was one of the leading physicians to
Kaiser Frederick III, who suffered from
cancer of the larynx. While other physicians such as
Ernst von Bergmann suggested surgical removal of the entire larynx, Virchow was opposed to it because no successful operation of this kind had ever been done. The British surgeon
Morell Mackenzie performed a
biopsy of the Kaiser in 1887 and sent it to Virchow, who identified it as "pachydermia verrucosa laryngis". Virchow affirmed that the tissues were not cancerous, even after several biopsy tests. The arguments between them turned into a century-long controversy, resulting in Virchow being accused of misdiagnosis and malpractice. But reassessment of the diagnostic history revealed that Virchow was right in his findings and decisions. It is now believed that the Kaiser had hybrid verrucous carcinoma, a very rare form of
verrucous carcinoma, and that Virchow had no way of correctly identifying it. (The cancer type was correctly identified only in 1948 by
Lauren Ackerman.)
Inflammation Virchow analysed the four key symptoms of inflammation (redness, swelling, heat and pain) and postulated that inflammation includes several inflammatory processes. He introduced the idea of a fifth symptom,
functio laesa, the loss of function of inflamed tissues.
Anatomy It was discovered approximately simultaneously by Virchow and
Charles Emile Troisier that an enlarged left supraclavicular node is one of the earliest signs of gastrointestinal malignancy, commonly of the stomach, or less commonly, lung cancer. This sign has become known as
Virchow's node and simultaneously
Troisier's sign.
Thromboembolism Virchow is also known for elucidating the mechanism of pulmonary
thromboembolism (a condition of blood clotting in the blood vessels), coining the terms
embolism and
thrombosis. He noted that blood clots in the pulmonary artery originate first from venous thrombi, stating in 1859: [T]he detachment of larger or smaller fragments from the end of the softening thrombus which are carried along by the current of blood and driven into remote vessels. This gives rise to the very frequent process on which I have bestowed the name of Embolia." Having made these initial discoveries based on autopsies, he proceeded to put forward a scientific hypothesis; that pulmonary thrombi are transported from the veins of the leg and that the blood has the ability to carry such an object. He then proceeded to prove this hypothesis by well-designed experiments, repeated numerous times to consolidate evidence, and with meticulously detailed methodology. This work rebutted a claim made by the eminent French pathologist
Jean Cruveilhier that
phlebitis led to clot development and that thus coagulation was the main consequence of venous inflammation. This was a view held by many before Virchow's work. Related to this research, Virchow described the factors contributing to venous thrombosis,
Virchow's triad.
Pathology Virchow founded the medical fields of
cellular pathology and comparative pathology (comparison of diseases common to humans and animals). His most important work in the field was
Cellular Pathology (
Die Cellularpathologie in ihrer Begründung auf physiologische und pathologische Gewebelehre) published in 1858, as a collection of his lectures. and the "greatest advance which scientific medicine had made since its beginning." His very innovative work may be viewed as between that of
Giovanni Battista Morgagni, whose work Virchow studied, and that of
Paul Ehrlich, who studied at the Charité while Virchow was developing microscopic pathology there. One of Virchow's major contributions to German medical education was to encourage the use of microscopes by medical students, and he was known for constantly urging his students to "think microscopically". He was the first to establish a link between infectious diseases between humans and animals, for which he coined the term "
zoonoses". He also introduced scientific terms such as "
chromatin", "
agenesis", "
parenchyma", "
osteoid", "
amyloid degeneration", and "
spina bifida". His concepts on pathology directly opposed humourism, an ancient medical dogma that diseases were due to imbalanced body fluids, hypothetically called humours, that still pervaded. Virchow was a great influence on Swedish pathologist
Axel Key, who worked as his assistant during Key's doctoral studies in Berlin.
Parasitology Virchow worked out the life cycle of a roundworm
Trichinella spiralis. Virchow noticed a mass of circular white flecks in the muscle of dog and human cadavers, similar to those described by
Richard Owen in 1835. He confirmed by microscopic observation that the white particles were indeed the larvae of roundworms, curled up in the muscle tissue. Rudolph Leukart found that these tiny worms could develop into adult roundworms in the intestine of a dog. He correctly asserted that these worms could also cause human
helminthiasis. Virchow further demonstrated that if the infected meat is first heated to 137 °F for 10 minutes, the worms could not infect dogs or humans. He established that human roundworm infection occurs via contaminated pork. This directly led to the establishment of meat inspection, which was first adopted in Berlin.
Autopsy Virchow was the first to develop a systematic method of autopsy, based on his knowledge of cellular pathology. The modern autopsy still constitutes his techniques. His first significant autopsy was on a 50-year-old woman in 1845. He found an unusual number of white blood cells, and gave a detailed description in 1847 and named the condition as
leukämie. One on his autopsies in 1857 was the first description of
vertebral disc rupture. His autopsy on a baby in 1856 was the first description of congenital pulmonary
lymphangiectasia (the name given by K. M. Laurence a century later), a rare and fatal disease of the lung. From his experience of post-mortem examinations of cadavers, he published his method in a small book in 1876. His book was the first to describe the techniques of autopsy specifically to examine abnormalities in organs, and retain important tissues for further examination and demonstration. Unlike any other earlier practitioner, he practiced complete surgery of all body parts with body organs dissected one by one. This has become the standard method.
Ochronosis Virchow discovered the clinical syndrome which he called
ochronosis, a metabolic disorder in which a patient accumulates
homogentisic acid in connective tissues and which can be identified by discolouration seen under the microscope. He found the unusual symptom in an autopsy of the corpse of a 67-year-old man on 8 May 1884. This was the first time this abnormal disease affecting cartilage and connective tissue was observed and characterised. His description and coining of the name appeared in the October 1866 issue of
Virchows Archiv.
Forensic work Virchow was the first to analyse hair in criminal investigation, and made the first forensic report on it in 1861. He was called as an expert witness in a murder case, and he used hair samples collected from the victim. He became the first to recognise the limitation of hair as evidence. He found that hairs can be different in an individual, that individual hair has characteristic features, and that hairs from different individuals can be strikingly similar. He concluded that evidence based on hair analysis is inconclusive. His testimony runs:
Anthropology and prehistory biology , 1861 Virchow developed an interest in anthropology in 1865, when he discovered pile dwellings in northern Germany. In 1869, he co-founded the German Anthropological Association. In 1870 he founded the
Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology, and Prehistory (
Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte) which was very influential in coordinating and intensifying German archaeological research. Until his death, Virchow was several times (at least fifteen times) its president, often taking turns with his former student
Adolf Bastian. In 1870, he led a major excavation of the hill forts in Pomerania. He also excavated wall mounds in
Wöllstein in 1875 with
Robert Koch, whose paper he edited on the subject.
Anti-Darwinism Virchow was an opponent of
Darwin's theory of evolution, and particularly skeptical of the emergent thesis of
human evolution. He did not reject evolutionary theory as a whole, and viewed the theory of natural selection as "an immeasurable advance" but that still has no "actual proof". On 22 September 1877, he delivered a public address entitled
"The Freedom of Science in the Modern State" before the Congress of German Naturalists and Physicians in Munich. There he spoke against the teaching of the theory of evolution in schools, arguing that it was as yet an unproven hypothesis that lacked empirical foundations and that, therefore, its teaching would negatively affect scientific studies.
Ernst Haeckel, who had been Virchow's student, later reported that his former professor said that "it is quite certain that man did not descend from the apes...not caring in the least that now almost all experts of good judgment hold the opposite conviction." Virchow became one of the leading opponents on the debate over the authenticity of
Neanderthal, discovered in 1856, as distinct species and ancestral to modern humans. He himself examined the
original fossil in 1872, and presented his observations before the Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte. With such an authority, the fossil was rejected as new species. With this reasoning, Virchow "judged Darwin an ignoramus and Haeckel a fool and was loud and frequent in the publication of these judgments," and declared that "it is quite certain that man did not descend from the apes." The Neanderthals were later accepted as distinct species of humans,
Homo neanderthalensis. On 22 September 1877, at the Fiftieth Conference of the German Association of Naturalists and Physician held in Munich, Haeckel pleaded for introducing evolution in the public school curricula, and tried to dissociate Darwinism from social Darwinism. His campaign was because of Herman Müller, a school teacher who was banned because of his teaching a year earlier on the inanimate origin of life from carbon. This resulted in prolonged public debate with Virchow. A few days later Virchow responded that Darwinism was only a hypothesis, and morally dangerous to students. This severe criticism of Darwinism was immediately taken up by the London
Times, from which further debates erupted among English scholars. Haeckel wrote his arguments in the October issue of
Nature titled "The Present Position of Evolution Theory", to which Virchow responded in the next issue with an article "The Liberty of Science in the Modern State". Virchow stated that teaching of evolution was "contrary to the conscience of the natural scientists, who reckons only with facts." Years later, the noted German physician
Carl Ludwig Schleich would recall a conversation he held with Virchow, who was a close friend of his: "...On to the subject of
Darwinism. 'I don't believe in all this,' Virchow told me. 'if I lie on my sofa and blow the possibilities away from me, as another man may blow the smoke of his cigar, I can, of course, sympathize with such dreams. But they don't stand the test of knowledge. Haeckel is a fool. That will be apparent one day. As far as that goes, if anything like transmutation did occur it could only happen in the course of pathological degeneration!'" Virchow's ultimate opinion about evolution was reported a year before he died; in his own words: Virchow's anti-evolutionism, like that of
Albert von Kölliker and
Thomas Brown, did not come from religion, since he was not a believer. and militarism. In 1885, he launched a study of
craniometry, which gave results contradictory to contemporary
scientific racist theories on the "Aryan race", leading him to denounce the "
Nordic mysticism" at the 1885 Anthropology Congress in
Karlsruhe. Josef Kollmann, a collaborator of Virchow, stated at the same congress that the people of Europe, be they German, Italian, English or French, belonged to a "mixture of various races", further declaring that the "results of craniology" led to a "struggle against any theory concerning the superiority of this or that European race" over others. He analysed the hair, skin, and eye colour of 6,758,827 schoolchildren to identify the Jews and Aryans. His findings, published in 1886 and concluding that there could be neither a Jewish nor a German race, were regarded as a blow to
anti-Semitism and the existence of an "Aryan race".
Anti-germ theory of diseases Virchow did not believe in the
germ theory of diseases, as advocated by
Louis Pasteur and
Robert Koch. He proposed that diseases came from abnormal activities inside the cells, not from outside pathogens. He even attacked Koch's and
Ignaz Semmelweis' policy of handwashing as an antiseptic practice, who said of him: "Explorers of nature recognize no bugbears other than individuals who speculate." ==Politics and social medicine==