There are few people in the history of medicine who created promising theories that revolutionized the existing system of knowledge. The German Virchow rightfully belongs to such reformers of medicine. After the appearance of his cellular theory, medicine saw the pathological process in a new way.
Father of the "cellular theory"
The father of the “cellular theory” Rudolf Virchow is a reformer of scientific and practical medicine, the founder of modern pathological anatomy, the founder of a scientific direction in medicine, which went down in the history of science under the name cellular or cellular pathology.
After graduating from university in 1843 and defending his doctoral dissertation, Dr. Virchow took up the study of cellular materials with great enthusiasm; he did not leave the microscope for days. The work threatened him with blindness. As a result of such dedicated work, he discovered in 1846 the glial cells that make up the brain.
The unpopular characters of the brain turned out to be glial cells. They were unlucky because all the abilities of the brain were traditionally explained only through the work of the neuron, and all techniques were aimed and adapted to the neuron - eavesdropping on its impulsive speech and isolating neurotransmitters, tracking the afferent pathways and regulating peripheral organs. Glia is deprived of all this. And therefore, when R. Galambos proposed that it is glial cells, and not neurons, that form the basis the most complex abilities brain: acquired behavior, learning, memory, his idea seemed completely fantastic, and none of the scientists took it seriously. Rudolf Virchow considered glia to be a supporting skeleton and “cellular cement” that supports and holds together nervous tissue. Hence the name: translated from ancient Greek “glion” means glue. Further study of glial cells brought many surprises.
26 thousand corpses
Having received the title of privatdozent in 1847, Virchow plunged headlong into pathological anatomy: he began to clarify the changes that occur in the material substrate when various diseases. He gave incomparable descriptions of the microscopic picture of various diseased tissues and visited with his lens every dirtiest corner of twenty-six thousand corpses. Virchow, a prolific scientist who published a thousand works on a variety of medical topics, was elected a member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences in the same year.
Time passes, full of hard work, and Virchow finally, in 1856, receives a long-awaited offer to occupy the department of pathological anatomy, general pathology and therapy, specially established for him, at the University of Berlin. At the same time, he created the Pathological Institute and Museum; becomes director of the Institute of Pathology. He works in this position until the end of his life. Let's take a closer look at what Virchow's merit is.
Before Virchow's work, views on disease were primitive and abstract. According to Plato’s definition, “disease is a disorder of the elements that determine the harmony of a healthy person,” Paracelsus put forward the concept of the “healing” power of nature (via medicatrix naturae) and considered the course and outcome of the disease depending on the outcome of the struggle between pathogenic forces and the healing forces of the body. In the era of ancient Roman culture, C. Celsus believed that the occurrence of disease was associated with the impact on the body of a special pathogenic idea (idea morbosa). The essence of the disease was seen in a violation of the harmony of the body, caused by the action of spirits ("archaea") residing in the stomach (Paracelsus), disrupting metabolism and enzyme activity (Van Helmont) and mental balance (Stahl).
Pre-Virchow and post-Virchow periods
After Virchow's work, it became generally accepted to divide the history of medicine into two periods - pre-Virchow and post-Virchow. In the last period, medicine was greatly influenced by the ideas and authority of Virchow. Virchow's views were recognized as the guiding theory of medicine by almost all of his contemporaries, including the largest representative of the humoral direction, the Austrian anatomist Karl Rokitansky.
Rudolf Virchow - short, with kind eyes and with such a sincere expression of curiosity as talented people have, already in the first years of his activity he openly opposed the dominant humoral trend in pathology at that time, which originated from Hippocrates and proceeded from the position that the basis of any The disease process is changes in the composition of body fluids (blood, lymph). In his first works, he characterized such important pathological processes as vascular blockage, inflammation, and regeneration. His research was built on completely new grounds for that time, with a new approach to the analysis of disease processes, which he later developed into the doctrine of cellular pathology.
Professor Virchow summarized his scientific views in 1855 and presented them in his journal in an article entitled “Cellular Pathology.” In 1858, his theory was published as a separate book (2 volumes) entitled “Cellular pathology as a doctrine based on physiological and pathological histology.” At the same time, his systematic lectures were published, in which for the first time, in a certain order, all the main pathological processes were characterized from a new angle, new terminology was introduced for a number of processes, which have been preserved to this day (“thrombosis”, “embolism”, “amyloid degeneration” ", "leukemia", etc.) In Russia, the first edition of "Cellular Pathology" was published in 1859. Since then, it has been regularly republished in almost all countries and for decades has been the basis for the theoretical thinking of many generations of doctors.
He explained the cause of illness
Virokhov's cellular pathology had a huge impact on the further development of medicine; According to the theory of cellular pathology, the pathological process is the sum of disturbances in the vital functions of individual cells. Virchow described the pathomorphology and explained the main general pathological processes. Cellular pathology represents a broad theoretical system that covers all the main aspects of the life of the body under normal and pathological conditions. In his general ideas about complex organisms, Virchow proceeded from the doctrine that was formed at that time about the cellular structure of organisms. According to Virchow, the cell is the only carrier of life, an organism equipped with everything necessary for independent existence. He argued that “the cell really represents the last morphological element of all living things” ... and that “real activity still comes from the cell as a whole, and the cell is active only as long as it really represents an independent and integral element.” He established the continuity of cell formation in his now famous formula: “every cell is from a cell” (omnis cellula e cellula).”
Professor Virchow destroyed the mystical ideas about the nature of diseases that existed before him and showed that disease is also a manifestation of life, but occurring in conditions of impaired vital activity of the body, that is, he built a bridge between physiology and pathology. Virchow owns the shortest known definition of disease as “life under abnormal conditions.” According to his general ideas, he made the cell the material substrate of the disease: “The cell is the tangible substrate of pathological physiology, it is the cornerstone in the stronghold of scientific medicine.” “All our pathological information must be more strictly localized, summarized by changes in the elementary parts of tissues, in cells.”
Virkhov, Sechenov, Botkin
Virchow's general theoretical views met a number of objections. Particularly criticized was the “personification” of the cell, the idea of a complex organism as a “cellular federation”, as a “sum of vital units”: the decomposition of the organism into “districts and territories”, which sharply diverged from I.M. Sechenov’s ideas about the whole organism and the role nervous system, whose regulatory activity carries out this integrity. Sechenov spoke about the main thing: Virchow separates the organism from its environment. The disease cannot be considered as a simple violation of the vital functions of any group, the sum of individual cells. “Virchow’s cellular pathology... as a principle is false,” Sechenov said. By the way, S.P. Botkin remained a fan of Virchow’s theory.
In accordance with this for modern science The narrow localism of cellular pathology is unacceptable, according to which the disease is reduced to damage to certain cellular territories and its occurrence is the result of the direct impact of the pathogenic agent on these territories. It is also unacceptable for modern science to underestimate the role of nervous and humoral factors in the development of the disease. Row general provisions Cellular pathology is currently of only historical interest, which does not deny its enormous, revolutionary significance in medicine and biology.
Virchow's materials on the morphological basis of diseases were of decisive importance in the development of modern ideas about their nature. Introduced by him general method the study of diseases has been further developed and is the basis of modern pathological and anatomical research. Professor Virchow studied almost all human disease processes known at that time and published numerous works in which he gave a pathological description and explained the mechanism of development (pathogenesis) of the most important human diseases and a number of general pathological processes (tumors, regeneration processes, inflammation, tuberculosis, etc.) . A number of Virchow's articles are devoted to the pathology and epidemiology of infectious diseases from the point of view of his general fundamental theoretical concepts. During the period of rapid flowering of microbiology, Virchow rejected the possibility of exhaustively revealing the nature of an infectious disease by the discovery of its causative agent and argued that the main role in the development of this disease belongs to the reactions of the body - a view that was fully confirmed in all subsequent developments of infectiology.
Many of Virchow’s articles are devoted to the teaching of pathological anatomy, dissection techniques and the general methodology of dissection, its role and place in the system therapeutic medicine. In all his multifaceted activities, Virchow consistently pursued the idea of the unity of theory and practice. “Practical medicine is theoretical medicine applied,” Virchow proclaimed in the very first issue of his “Archive.” He always put forward the need for the pathologist to be in close contact with the clinic, figuratively formulating this requirement as follows: “The pathologist must see life in his material instead of death.” These ideas have retained their significance to this day and have found their further development in the clinical-anatomical direction of pathological anatomy developed by modern scientists.
But he didn't get along with Darwin
In Virchow's general biological views, which initially stood on the basis of evolutionary teaching and adjoined the teachings of Darwin, a change later occurred that coincided with a change in his general political views after the Paris Commune. In the second period of his life, he acted as an ardent opponent of evolutionary teaching.
Throughout his life, Virchow took an active part in public life in Germany. In the first period, he was a persistent and active advocate of social reforms, improving the financial situation of people, asserting, on the basis of his epidemiological studies, the social nature of many diseases. As a member of the Berlin municipality, he pushed for a number of sanitary and hygienic measures (in particular in matters of water supply, sewerage, etc.).
Virchow(Virchow) Rudolf Ludwig Karl (10/13/1821, Schiefelbein, Pomerania - 09/05/1902, Berlin), German pathologist, anthropologist, archaeologist and politician. Primary education received in the family and in private schools. In 1839 he entered the University of Berlin, choosing the topic of his essay: A life full of labor and struggle is not a yoke, but a blessing. In 1843 he defended his doctoral dissertation, and in the same year he began working at the Charité clinic in Berlin. In 1847 he became a professor at the University of Berlin. Founded the journal Archive of Pathological Anatomy and Clinical Medicine (Archiv fur pathologische Anatomie, Physiologie und fur klinische Medizin).
In 1848 Virchow was sent to Silesia to study the typhus epidemic. 53 years later, he wrote that it was then that he became convinced of the connection between issues of practical medicine and social reforms. From these positions, Virchow tried to cover medical problems in the journal Medical Reform. In 1849, due to anti-monarchist activities, he lost his position in the clinic and was forced to move from Berlin to Würzburg (Bavaria), where he became head of the department of pathological anatomy at the University of Würzburg. In 1856 he accepted the offer of the University of Berlin to occupy the newly created department of pathological anatomy; at the same time he became director of the Institute of Pathological Anatomy. In 1958, Virchow’s lectures were published in a separate book entitled “Cellular Pathology” (Die Cellularpathologie), in which any organism was considered as a collection of living cells, organized like a state. The personification of the cell and the idea of the organism as a cellular federation, the sum of individual cells, diverged from views of the organism as an integral system and met with numerous objections. Denial of the role of humoral and nervous factors in pathology was also unacceptable. Despite this, Virchow’s works on the morphological basis of diseases played an important role in the development of ideas about their nature and subsequently laid the foundation for modern pathological research.
Among Virchow's works are studies of pathology and epidemiology of infectious diseases, pathological anatomy, and the development of autopsy methodology. Virchow is the author of the theory of germ plasm continuity.
As a member of the Berlin municipality, Virchow pushed for a number of sanitary and hygienic measures (water supply, sewerage, etc.). In 1861 Virchow became a member of the Prussian Diet (Landtag). After the Franco-Prussian War, he withdrew from politics for a time, although he remained a member of the Landtag. I was studying educational activities: for 33 years he published popular science collections on ethnology, anthropology and archeology. Together with the famous German archaeologist G. Schliemann, he took part in the excavations of Troy and carried out a systematization of the skulls found there. He was the editor of an ethnological journal, and in 1873 he participated in the founding of the German Anthropological Society, the Berlin Society of Anthropology, Ethnology and ancient history. From 1880 to 1893 he was a member of the Reichstag.
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| Yuliy Germanovich Malis
| Rudolf Virchow. His life, scientific and social activities
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Biographical sketch of Yu. G. Malis
With a portrait of Virchow, engraved in Leipzig by Gedan
//-- Virchow’s childhood. – Gymnasium in Keslin. – Friedrich Wilhelm Medical-Surgical Institute. – New trends in German medicine. – Virchow University teachers. – Physiologist Johann Muller. – Clinician Schonlein. – Doctoral dissertation --//
Rudolf Virchow comes from a poor merchant family. His father was engaged in trade in Schiefelbein, a small town in the Prussian province of Pomerania, where one of the most outstanding representatives of modern medical science was born on October 13, 1821.
Virchow spent his childhood in his hometown, where he attended public school, and then, after additional home training, he entered the classical gymnasium in Keslin at the age of thirteen. Thanks to his outstanding abilities, which were already evident early on, Virchow, upon entering the gymnasium, had for his age a very thorough knowledge of ancient languages, especially Latin. His knowledge of Latin gained him the favor of the director of the Kesli gymnasium, Otto Müller, a great expert in Latin classics. On the contrary, a teacher of Greek, a certain Grieben, disliked Virchow, despite his no less good preparation and on this subject. The second preacher of the town, who studied Greek with Virchow in Schiefelbein, was fundamentally against learning grammatical rules by heart, and tried to ensure that the boy learned these rules quietly, practically, as a result of which he forced his student to translate a lot into Greek. As a result of this method of teaching, the young classicist acquired entire figures of speech and applied them unerringly in class exercises, in the so-called extemporalia, so memorable to everyone who went through the gauntlet of the routine system of classical education. The gymnasium teacher in Keslin, on the contrary, required, first of all, knowledge of grammatical rules by heart. Virchow did not satisfy this requirement of Grieben, and yet his translations into Greek were always very well and correctly written. The venerable teacher therefore treated Virchow’s knowledge with distrust and at first suspected him of cheating. When Grieben, despite all the strictness of control, could not notice that Virchow was resorting to any illicit means, he began to harbor some hostile feelings towards the innocent young man. This hostility between the teacher and the student could have, as often happens, fatal significance for Virchow.
At the final exam, although Virchow passed well in Greek, the stubborn teacher still declared that he was voting against Virchow, who, in his opinion, did not have sufficient moral maturity required for admission to the university. The opposition of the venerable Hellenist, fortunately, had no influence. Virchow not only received a matriculation certificate, but his name was included first in the list of eight who graduated with him, in March 1839, from a course at the Keslin gymnasium. It doesn’t hurt to note that Virchow was 17 and a half years old at the time.
Among the teaching staff of the Kesli gymnasium, the talented history teacher Bucher had a particularly beneficial and developing influence on his students. Thanks to him, Virchow developed an early interest in history, which he studied with enthusiasm. Under the influence of such a hobby, in all likelihood, that vein of publicity had already opened in the young man, which later flowed so strongly in the “armchair” scientist, who took a prominent place in the ranks of members of the Berlin municipality and the Prussian parliament.
Already on the gymnasium bench, Virchow decided to devote himself to the study of medicine and, even before completing the gymnasium course, submitted an application in advance to be accepted as a student at the Friedrich-Wilhelm Medical-Surgical Institute.
Virchow spent the spring and summer after graduating from high school in his homeland. He took advantage, among other things, of this free time to study, without any outside help, the Italian language. In general, Virchow had a great inclination and remarkable ability to study languages. Being in the last class of the gymnasium, he carefully attended Hebrew language classes and upon graduation, although he already knew that he was devoting himself to medical sciences, he even passed an exam in the Hebrew language - an exam that was important only for future theologians.
In the fall of 1839, Virchow left his hometown and went to the capital, Berlin, to enter the medical-surgical institute.
The Friedrich-Wilhelm Medical-Surgical Institute in Berlin was founded at the very end of the 18th century with the aim of training efficient doctors for the Prussian army. This institute was structured on the model of higher military educational institutions; its students were government officials who lived in the institute itself. During the four-year course, they listened to lectures from professors at the Berlin Medical Faculty along with university students. The institute had an excellent anatomical museum, a museum of military field surgery, a museum of surgical instruments and apparatus, physics and chemistry rooms, a collection of pharmacological (medicinal) preparations, and also, most importantly, an extremely rich medical library, containing about 50 thousand volumes. Military doctors attached to the institute work with students as tutors. Thanks to all this, the Medical-Surgical Institute provides full opportunity for disadvantaged young people to receive an excellent medical education. From this institute came a whole phalanx of luminaries of German medicine. We will only name Virchow's comrade, Helmholtz, the famous physiologist and physicist, Leiden, professor of internal medicine at the University of Berlin, and Nothnagel, who occupies the same department in Vienna.
At that time, the head of the medical-surgical institute was Wibel, “old man Wibel,” as everyone called him. He was, according to Virchow’s definition, “a man of moderate knowledge, but with great tact, whose heart was in the right place.” It was the responsibility of the assistant head of the institute, Grimm, to specifically monitor the educational part and supervise the students’ classes. The latter was distinguished by his breadth of vision and was able to notice the special abilities of each student individually and guide them accordingly.
Soon after Virchow was accepted into the ranks of the institute's students, Grimm drew attention to the outstanding abilities of the newcomer and the passion with which our young physician devoted himself to the study of his science.
At that time, German medicine was entering a new phase. The Chinese wall that separated German medicine from French and English medicine with their positive direction - a wall created by the Germans' admiration for various philosophical systems - finally collapsed. The last philosophical system to subordinate medicine to its influence was the teaching of Schelling - his natural philosophy. Outstanding representatives of natural science and medicine of the first quarter of the 19th century stood under the banner of natural philosophy. This hobby was facilitated to a large extent by the idealism of Schelling's teaching, who preached high views on the tasks of science and life. The German medical historian Geser even sees a well-known connection between the national revival of Germany and the widespread dissemination of natural philosophy. The brilliant period of this teaching coincided with the wars of liberation, and “the best and brightest personalities among the Germans belonged to the heralds of natural philosophy.” The natural philosophical school of medicine built its system on the foundations of Schelling’s philosophy; for her, a logical hypothesis was a completely legitimate equivalent to observation. Following this path, this notorious “philosophy of nature” reached such fantastic inventions where there was no longer a trace of either nature or philosophy. Such extremes naturally caused a reaction. German doctors realized that an alliance with such a philosophy was fruitless. They realized that medicine, this science about man, about a living organism, cannot be studied by dead books that theories and fantasies created in the quiet of the office must give way to reality and facts, that the life-giving sources of medicine should be sought in the natural sciences. Observation, as natural science understands it, is the motto of the so-called natural history school, which replaced the former natural philosophical school. French medicine had adopted this direction much earlier, and the new medical school in Germany had to transfer the scientific acquisitions of its neighbors to its soil. Indeed, from this moment on, the precise method of clinical research, as it was practiced by the French and English, was pouring into German clinics in a wide wave. Of course, the “natural history” school could not immediately shake off the fog of natural philosophy, this uncontrollable passion for hasty generalizations and dubious systematization. The theoretical structure of medicine still rested to a large extent on hypotheses and analogies.
In the development of German healthcare, the new school served as a transition from the natural philosophical to the modern natural scientific view of medicine. In the era we are describing, the dawn of the natural science era in medicine was already underway in Germany. The natural scientific method in full, with its powerful levers - observation and experience - began to be used by German doctors. They had to go through all these stages in a relatively short time.
We find Virchow on the student bench, when victory was far from being on the side of the new trends. The struggle was waged along the entire line; the Sturm– und Drangperiode of German medicine was far from over.
Among the professors at the University of Berlin were precisely those two representatives of medical science who played a primary role in the revival of German medicine - the famous physiologist Johann Muller and the brilliant clinician Schönlein, head of the school of natural history. Thanks to this fortunate circumstance, Virchow was able to become acquainted with new scientific trends first-hand. He did not have to regret that, being attached as a student of the medical-surgical institute to Berlin, he was deprived of the opportunity to follow the laudable and useful custom of German students, who, not limiting themselves to staying at any one university, strive to visit several universities during their university course. in order to listen to leading professors in various branches of the corresponding cycle of sciences.
In everyone's life educated person the impressions that he experienced on the university bench, the influence, or rather, the influences that outstanding professors have on their audience, do not pass without a trace. For future scientists, these influences often determine the direction and nature of further independent scientific activity. One can rightfully apply a well-known French proverb to a scientist, paraphrasing it somewhat, namely: “Tell me who your teachers are, and I will tell you who you are.”
Who were Rudolf Virchow's teachers?
Among the university teachers who had a special influence on the scientific development of the young Virchow were Johann Muller - “one of the greatest biologists of all times,” as he was later characterized, and then the clinician-therapist Schönlein - “a brilliant doctor who combined real direction with bold theories,” according to our definition the great surgeon-thinker Pirogov.
The son of a shoemaker in Koblenz, Johann Müller, under very unfavorable conditions, completed a university course at the medical faculties of Bonn and Berlin. While only a fourth-semester student, the gifted 19-year-old received a medical prize from the University of Bonn for his experimental work in embryology. In Berlin, under the influence of the professor of anatomy and physiology Rudolphi, Müller so radically renounced the natural philosophical inclinations he had acquired in Bonn that he later burned all the copies of his first works that he could get his hands on. The participation and support of an influential member of the Prussian Ministry of Education gave Müller the opportunity, after completing the course, to calmly engage in further scientific work. Soon Müller received a professorship at the University of Bonn, from where he moved to Berlin in an unusual way. When in 1833 the department of anatomy was vacant at the University of Berlin and there was talk of who to appoint, the Minister of Public Education completely unexpectedly received a statement from Bonn professor I. Müller. In his letter, Johann Müller demanded that the vacant chair be given to him as the most suitable candidate; He was ready to give in to only one person, namely the famous pathologist at that time, Johann Friedrich Meckel. This famous letter, transmitted to the minister by the same patron of Müller, a member of the ministry, breathed the purest love for science and deep feeling self-esteem; it made a very strong impression on the minister, and Müller took the chair in Berlin.
The brilliant mind of a scientist who had an extraordinary breadth of vision and extensive information on all biological sciences, an original and highly independent character and, finally, a very special, impressive appearance, reminiscent of the appearance of a Roman warrior - all this in Müller had an irresistible effect on his listeners. Our famous surgeon, N.I. Pirogov, who studied at the same time in Berlin, speaking about Müller, also dwells on his appearance. “The face of Johann Muller,” writes Pirogov, “struck you with its classic profile, high forehead and two eyebrow furrows, which gave his gaze a stern look and made the penetrating gaze of his expressive eyes somewhat stern. As if in the sun, it was awkward for a newcomer to look straight into Müller’s face.”
Johann Müller was not the head scientific school in the ordinary sense of the word. He did not base his views on the infallible dogmas obligatory for his students as followers of a famous school. “There is no,” Virchow said later (1858), “Müller’s school in the sense of dogmas, since he did not teach them - but only in the sense of method. The school of natural science that he formed does not know the generality of the known teaching, but only the generality of firmly established facts and, even more so, the generality of the method.” This method is an “exact” natural scientific method, which is based on observation and experience and which aims to firmly establish facts. “One man,” declares Helmholtz in his excellent speech “Thinking in Medicine” (“Das Denken in der Median”), “has especially given us the enthusiasm for working in a truly scientific direction, namely, the physiologist Johann Müller. All theories were for him only hypotheses, which are subject to testing by facts and about which the facts alone decide.”
From the famous physiological triumvirate of Müller's students - Helmholtz, Brücke and Dubois-Reymond - the latter paints for us in vivid and attractive colors how Johann Müller taught and how he influenced his students.
“Just as he himself,” writes Dubois-Reymond, “stood on his own feet everywhere, so he demanded from his students that they be able to help themselves. He set goals and gave impetus; for the rest, he was content, using a chemical comparison, with some kind of catalytic effect. No more was required. He acted as, in Goethe’s words, beauty acts—by its mere presence. He was surrounded, in the eyes of his students, by some kind of demonic charm, like Napoleon I in the eyes of his soldiers, and “Soldats, l" Empere ur a l "oeil sur vous" was enough for us to arouse in us highest voltage strength If I try to analyze this charm, then it seems to me that it lies in the fact that everyone who was close to him experienced, consciously or unconsciously and each in his own way, the captivating influence of a powerful personality who, sacrificing all sorts of other considerations, all sorts of life's pleasures, all sorts of comforts - pursued an ideal goal with a seriousness that bordered on gloominess and all-conquering passion. The highest reward for us was when Müller forgot himself for a moment, abandoned his stern seriousness and indulged in universal conversations and jokes. Müller refrained from influencing the course of the research he initiated, but he provided his students with the widest freedom in their development and inclinations. He respected all independence. This explains that among his students, it was precisely those who further pursued his most characteristic aspirations in physiology who could be in deep and openly expressed contradiction with him, and this never cast the slightest shadow on the mutual relations established between Müller and them. Thus, Müller, without trying at all, never presenting himself as a teacher either orally or in writing, never using the word “student”, in fact and truly founded not only one, but several schools of research into organic nature, according to his own versatility. Müller’s schools, while continuing to work in completely different directions, have nothing in common except that the fire they protect and support first appeared from his forge, that all these schools question nature in its meaning.”
Like all truly outstanding scientists who love their science, Johann Muller, generally extremely reserved, willingly met any manifestation of interest and love for science on the part of his listeners. With the foresight inherent in great minds, he recognized those most capable of scientific research. Virchow belonged to those select few par excellence whom Müller brought especially close to himself and with whom he was in direct personal communication. Virchow’s relationship with his “unforgettable teacher,” established as a student, later turned into a friendship that did not break until Muller’s death. “Few, like me,” says Virchow, not without just pride, “have had the lot in every important stage of their scientific development to see ourselves next to our teacher. His hand guided the first steps of a newcomer, through his lips as a dean I was awarded a doctorate, I met his warm gaze when, again during his deanship, I gave my first public lecture as a privatdozent. Of the large number of his students, I was the only one called, at his own suggestion, to take a place next to him in the close circle of the faculty, and he voluntarily provided me with an important area of \u200b\u200bhis ancestral possessions.
Another university teacher who had a strong influence on the student Virchow was the professor of internal medicine - Schönlein. If Johann Müller has the great merit of restoring in basic medical science, in physiology, the sovereign rights of strictly scientific observation and experiment - rights trampled upon by various philosophical schools, then Schönlein, in turn, took one of the most prominent places among German clinicians, introducing German clinical medicine, more precise methods of research, which are based on the natural sciences - physics and chemistry. The Schönlein Clinic was the first in Germany to use tapping and auscultation. At a time when in other German clinics cardiac and pulmonary suffering was still determined by the pulse and other so-called “rational” symptoms, Schönlein sought to find out the condition of the organs themselves through an accurate study. Using a microscope and chemical reagents, he examined painful secretions, blood and tissue. He related changes in organs found during autopsies to the clinical picture of the disease as it was observed during life. He skillfully used the data from the dissecting table at the patient’s bedside in order to achieve the most accurate diagnosis. “Pathological anatomy,” says Virchow about Schönlein, “became the basis of his diagnosis, and the latter became the basis of his fame.” And Schönlein's fame resounded throughout Germany and far beyond its borders. Schönlein's clinic, first in Würzburg, then in Zurich and finally in Berlin, was a veritable Mecca for students and doctors who flocked to his lectures from all directions. An important role here was also played by the fact that Schönlein presented his lectures in an extremely fascinating and lively manner. He understood the true meaning of the teacher’s “living word” and its enormous advantage over the “dead letter” of the book. This may partly explain why Schönlein wrote so little. His lectures were repeatedly published by his listeners, which, due to inevitable distortions, gave Schönlein more grief than pleasure, and were translated into foreign languages. Pirogov’s friend at the professorial institute in Derit, professor at Moscow University G.I. Sokolsky, who was Schonlein’s student in Zurich, published his lectures (in 1841) in Russian. Meanwhile, during the forty years of his professorial career, Schönlein himself published two articles that together took up no more than three printed pages. And this is in Germany, whose scientists are amazingly prolific! Nevertheless, according to Pirogov’s fair remark, “few of the leading figures in medical science have earned themselves such a name as Schönlein, without leaving behind a single work, except lectures carelessly compiled by students.” To the regret of many “scientists”, the history of science in its assessment does not take into account the commercial value of published works.
Schönlein moved to Berlin from Zurich at Easter 1839, just when Virchow completed his gymnasium course.
“Since I,” says Virchow, “studied medicine in Berlin, I had the good fortune to listen to the new professor even in his brightest time, and I gratefully acknowledge that he had a tremendous influence on me.”
On Virchow, who was introduced to the basic medical sciences - anatomy, physiology and pathological anatomy, his future specialty - by Müller, and who was imbued to the marrow with the natural scientific direction of the latter, a clinician like Schönlein, and only such a clinician could and should have had an enormous impact influence. In Schönlein, Virchow saw, as it were, a second Muller, but a Muller who had moved from the laboratory to the clinic to the patient’s bedside.
Virchow listened to theoretical lectures on private pathology and therapy (internal medicine) from Schönlein in 1841/42 academic year. He himself took notes for the professor and kept these notes with all possible care. As early as 1865, Virchow kept these notes. Virchow was an intern at the Schönlein clinic during the winter semester of 1842/43.
IN last year During his student years, in the summer of 1843, Virchow acted as a junior resident at the eye clinic of Professor Jungken. This circumstance gave him the reason to take the topic of his doctoral dissertation on a question in the field of eye diseases.
On October 21, 1843, Virchow publicly defended his dissertation “On inflammation of the cornea,” chaired by the dean of the medical faculty, Johann Muller.
Already in this first scientific work, it was clearly revealed how much Virchow was imbued with the new natural science direction in medicine. In the introduction to his work, the young scientist expresses regret that the methods that modern medicine owes to the study of eye diseases have not yet been applied natural sciences. To appreciate the weight and fairness of this reproach, one should remember what a revolution in ophthalmology was subsequently made by Helmholtz’s invention (in 1851) of the eye mirror, a device that made it possible to directly observe the inside of the eyeball (the fundus). Thanks to the further application of the laws of physical optics to the study of the structure and functioning of our organ of vision, in other words, thanks to the development of physiological optics, ophthalmology has become one of the most complete and elegant pages of medical knowledge. Imbued with the ideas of his teachers, Müller and Schönlein, Virchow sadly notes that natural scientific methods of research do not find application in precisely the area of medicine where they are most appropriate.
Virchow, Rudolf Ludwig Karl (1821-1902), German pathologist, anthropologist, archaeologist and politician.
Born on October 13, 1821 in Schiefelbein (Pomerania; now Świdwin in Poland). He received his primary education at home and in private schools. At the age of 14 he entered the fourth grade of the gymnasium in Keshlin.
In 1839 he entered the University of Berlin, choosing the topic of his essay “A life full of labor and struggle is not a yoke, but a blessing.” In 1843 he defended his doctoral dissertation, and in the same year he began working at the Charité clinic in Berlin. In 1846 he became a dissector, and in 1847 - a professor at the University of Berlin. In the same year, he founded the journal “Archive of Pathological Anatomy and Clinical Medicine” (“Archiv fr pathologische Anatomie und fr klinische Medizin”), which became one of the main publications in the field of theoretical medicine.
In the winter of 1848 Virchow was sent to Silesia to study the typhus epidemic. Among his recommendations for combating the epidemic was this: to give freedom and democracy to the impoverished and disease-plagued region. This trip was of great importance for Virchow. 53 years later, he wrote that it was then that he became convinced of the connection between issues of practical medicine and social reforms.
From these positions, he tried to cover medical problems in the short-lived journal “Medical Reform” that he published. In 1849, due to anti-monarchist activities, Virchow lost his place in the clinic and was forced to move from Berlin to Würzburg (Bavaria), where he headed the department of pathological anatomy at the University of Würzburg.
In 1856, he accepted an offer from the University of Berlin to occupy the newly created department of pathological anatomy; at the same time he became director of the Institute of Pathological Anatomy.
In 1958, Virchow’s lectures were published in a separate book entitled Cellular Pathology (Die Cellularpathologie), in which the main pathological processes were systematized based on the structural and functional changes of individual cells or their groups (cellular pathology), and any organism was presented as “a set of living cells organized like a state." The “personification” of the cell, the idea of the organism as a “cellular federation”, “the sum of individual cells” diverged from the views of the organism as an integral system and met with numerous objections.
Denial of the role of humoral and nervous factors in pathology was also unacceptable. Despite this, Virchow’s materials on the morphological basis of diseases played an important role in the development of ideas about their nature and subsequently laid the foundation for modern pathological research.
A large number of Virchow's works were written on general biological topics. His research into the pathology and epidemiology of infectious diseases is well known; many articles are devoted to pathological anatomy and autopsy methodology. He is also the author of the theory of germ plasm continuity.
Virchow was also known as a public figure. As a member of the Berlin municipality, he actively pushed for a number of sanitary and hygienic measures (water supply, sewerage, etc.). In 1861 Virchow became a member of the Prussian Diet (Landtag). After the Franco-Prussian War, he withdrew from politics for a time, although he remained a member of the Landtag. He was engaged in educational activities: for 33 years he published popular science collections on ethnology, anthropology and archeology. Together with the famous German archaeologist G. Schliemann, Virchow took part in the excavations of Troy and carried out a systematization of the skulls found there. He was the editor of an ethnological journal, and in 1873 he participated in the founding of the German Anthropological Society and the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Ancient History. In 1876 he published the results of a survey of 7 million schoolchildren, designed to bury the myth of fair-haired and blue-eyed Aryans. From 1880 to 1893 Virchow was a member of the Reichstag. Virchow died in Berlin on September 5, 1902.
Rudolf Ludwig Karl Virchow(German: Rudolf Ludwig Karl Virchow; October 13, 1821, Schiefelbein, Pomerania - September 5, 1902, Berlin) - German scientist and politician of the second half of the 19th century, doctor, pathologist, histologist, physiologist, one of the founders of cell theory in biology and medicine , founder of the theory of cellular pathology in medicine; was also known as an archaeologist, anthropologist and paleontologist.
Biography
He was born on October 13, 1821 in the town of Schiefelbein in the Prussian province of Pomerania (now the Polish city of Swidwin).
After completing a course at the Friedrich-Wilhelm Medical Institute in Berlin in 1843, Virchow first became an assistant and then became vice-rector at the Berlin Charité hospital.
In 1847 he received the right to teach and, together with Benno Reinhard († 1852), founded the journal Archiv fr pathol. Anatomie u. Physiology u. fr clinic. Medicin”, now known worldwide under the name of the Virchow Archive.
In 1891, the 126th volume of this publication was published, containing more than 200 articles by Virchow himself and representing a living half-century history of the most important acquisitions of medical science.
At the beginning of 1848, Virchow was sent to Upper Silesia to study the epidemic of famine typhus that prevailed there. His report on this trip, published in the Archives and of great scientific interest, is at the same time colored by political ideas in the spirit of 1848. This circumstance, as well as his general participation in the reform movements of that time, caused the Prussian government to dislike him and prompted him to accept the regular chair of pathological anatomy at the University of Würzburg, which quickly glorified his name.
In 1856 he returned to Berlin as professor of pathological anatomy, general pathology and therapy and director of the newly established pathological institute, where he remained until the end of his life. This institute soon became a center of attraction for young scientists from all educated countries. Russian medical scientists especially owe a lot to Virchow and his institute.
Since 1866, together with Professor August Hirsch, he published “Jahresbericht ber die Fortschritte und Leistungen in der Medizin”.
He was buried in Berlin, Schöneburg.
Advances in biology and medicine
Virchow is the founder of the so-called cellular (cellular) pathology, in which disease processes are reduced to changes in the vital activity of the smallest elementary parts of the animal body - its cells. The views of this scientific theory, in connection with the successes of chemistry and physiology, forever freed medicine from various kinds of speculative hypotheses and constructions and closely connected it with the vast field of natural science.
As a pathologist, and especially a histologist, Virchow independently for the first time established the histological and physiological essence of very many painful processes of leukemia, thrombosis, embolism, amyloid degeneration of organs, English disease, tuberculosis, most neoplasms, trichinosis, etc. Virchow explained the normal structure of many organs and individual tissues; showed the presence of living and active cells in connective tissue different types; found that pathologically altered organs and neoplasms consist of ordinary types of tissue, established the contractility of lymphatic and cartilaginous cells; found out the structure of the mucous membranes and intermediate tissue of the nervous system; proved the possibility of neoformation of the gray matter of the brain, explained the dependence of the shape of the skull on the fusion of sutures, etc.
As an anthropologist, Virchow contributed a lot with his work to the establishment of the anatomical features of races; as a biologist in general, he resisted the fascination with the exclusively mechanical views on the phenomena of life, so widespread during his youth, and had the courage to defend the idea of the isolation of the element of life as a sui generis principle. This is where his famous thesis “omnis cellula e cellula” comes from (a cell comes only from a cell), which ended a long debate among biologists about the spontaneous generation of organisms. As a figure in the field of public hygiene, Virchow is known for his work on the study of epidemics accompanied by deprivation and hunger, as well as leprosy, and for his participation in public hygienic activities for the construction of hospitals, schools, etc.