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Updated: May 27, 2025
We find in the roster of scientists who believed in an inspired Bible and a divine Savior, such men as Hans Christian Oerstedt, the great discoverer of electro-magnetism and the father of all modern electrical science, who declared that he "had but a desire to lead men to God by his books;" Lavoisier, father of modern chemistry, a Christian; Maedler, who reached the front rank of modern astronomers without relinquishing his childhood faith and who said: "A real scientist cannot be an infidel;" Ritter, greatest of geographers, who said: "All the world is replete with the glory of the Creator;" Virchow, the surgeon of worldwide fame, who all his life was an outspoken opponent of the evolutionary theory and whose last prayer, uttered in the presence of his fellow-scientists, was: "Christi Blut und Gerechtigkeit . . . ."
The middle period of the nineteenth century showed a further development in prose literature, producing some of the greatest historians and critics the world has seen. At this time, too, Germany began to take the lead in science. The names of Virchow, Helmholtz, Häckel, out of a score of others, all of the first rank, are familiar to every person of education in the present and past generation.
In 1846, as a prosector in the University of Berlin, Virchow entered with Reinhardt upon a series of pathological investigations which at once received wide attention. Reinhardt died in 1852, leaving the editorship in the hands of Virchow alone, and he was still its editor up to the time of his death, on September 5, 1902.
For the nonprofessional observer the interest of the Virchow Institute must lie in its general scope rather than in the details of the subjects there brought under investigation, which latter have, indeed, of necessity, a somewhat grewsome character despite the beneficent results that spring from them.
The Institute of Hygiene deals with topics not very remote from those studied in the Virchow Institute, part of its work, indeed, falling clearly within the scope of pathology; but it differs in being clearly comprehensible to the general public and of immediate and tangible interest from the most strictly utilitarian stand-point, hygiene being, in effect, the tangible link between the more abstract medical sciences and the affairs of every-day life.
Virchow lived on the same plane, generally speaking, with the other scientists of Europe; it is only from the American standpoint that there is any seeming disparity between his fame and his material station in life; nor do I claim this as a merit of the American stand-point. Be that as it may, however, our present concern lies not with these matters, but with Virchow the pathologist and teacher.
The cases studied by Virchow were diffuse hyperostoses of the cranium. Starr describes what he supposes to be a case of this disease, and proposes the title megalocephaly as preferable to Virchow's term, because the soft parts are also included in the hypertrophic process.
And do not think they are kept only to be spanked and dusted during that dreadful period when their owner is but too thankful to become an exile and a wanderer from the scene of single combats between dead authors and living housemaids. Men were not all cowards before Agamemnon or all fools before the days of Virchow and Billroth.
The oldest known skull is the celebrated one of the Neander cave near Düsseldorf, with its large vault of the forehead, and its low height. Although Virchow finds on it evidences of rachitis in youth and of gout in old age, as well as of injuries, it nevertheless can not have been changed in its fundamental form by any sickness, even according to Virchow.
The electors of Professor Virchow and of Herr Löwe, in whose electoral districts a torchlight procession on the eve of Bismarck's birthday had to elbow its way through immense crowds, must have kept at home.
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