Rudolf Virchow played a large social and political role in not only Berlin society, but the whole of Prussia and the world. Outside of his contributions to science, Virchow’s political activism is often overlooked in history. He was an opponent of racism and publically denounced the ideas of an “Aryan” or “German” race which is somehow superior to other “races.” Virchow published scientific findings of craniometry early on in 1885, where his results of an analysis of almost 7 million school children’s hair, skin, and eye color contradicted contemporary racist theories.

Virchow also had profound influence over the global scientific community, and he was one of the most outspoken opponents to Darwin’s theory of “descent with modification”. While incorrect, this dissent resulted in more discussion and research to discover the details of evolution.

While many lauded Virchow as the “Pope of Medicine” due to the new perspectives he offered the medical field, he disagreed with germ theory. Instead, Rudolf proposed that social and economic equality were the cause of disease and epidemics. Virchow famously stated in his Report on the Typhus Outbreak of Upper Silesia that the path to solving and containing the outbreak was not through drug treatments or minor law changes, but only through radical action of “a full and unlimited democracy and education, freedom and prosperity” which would promote the advancement of an entire population. Rudolf Virchow was extensively involved in international medicine and at the forefront of the field of epidemiology, focused on improving the health of people through social and economic change.

Virchow’s Illustrations of Cells and Cellular Pathology

Virchow’s disbelief in microbial organisms as intracellular pathogens was stemmed from his  important research in cancer. He was the first to characterize the cellular pathology of leukemia in a 1845 paper. Virchow recognized that each cell stems from another cell and continued on to

Rudolf believed that every ailment stemmed from disease of the cells; he called this new field of study cellular pathology.

In addition to the field that he created, Virchow made monumental scientific discoveries and coined many new terms. He was the first to visualize cells present in bones and connective tissues, as well as describing myelin. In pathophysiology, Virchow made great strides by describing the mechanism of pulmonary thromboembolisms through the discovery of blood clots forming in venous thrombi before traveling to the pulmonary arteries. Additionally, he made the connection of diseases that spread from animals to humans–zoonoses.

Beginning in 1847, Virchow and a colleague founded a pathology journal, Archives for Pathological Anatomy and Physiology and Clinical Medicine. He continued to edit this journal until his death. Since then, it has been renamed to Virchow’s Archive and is still a leading source of prominent research in pathology. In 1854, he also developed Handbook of Special Pathology and Therapeutics, which became a model for later scientific and medical handbooks published in Europe.

A street named for Virchow at the Charite Hospital in Berlin.

Virchow also had a profound effect on medical education in Prussia. The first chair of pathological anatomy in Prussia was created for him in 1849. When the University of Berlin asked him to take a chair in 1856, he did so under the stipulation that a new pathological institution would be built there. In 1858, he published a collection of his lectures called Cellular Pathology. Throughout his career as a professor, Virchow delivered many lectures in the Charite hospital where he built an extensive pathological specimen collection. He also taught many physicians who would go on to great things, including two of the four founders of John Hopkins. Virchow was a proponent of physicians also acting as researchers and encouraged his students to spend more time working with microscopes, as well as conducting experiments on animals.

The lecture hall at Charite, where Virchow gave a speech the night before his 80th birthday. The room was bombed during WWII and has been preserved.

Although most of his early work involved pathology and public health, Virchow spent the latter portion of his life doing anthropological work. His research in this field was recognized when he was elected to the Prussian Academy of Science in 1873.

The Reichstag, where Virchow served from 1880 to 1893

In 1859 Rudolf Virchow became a member of the Municipal council of Berlin where he began his career as a civic reformer. He was made the Progressive Party leader the same year he was elected to the Prussian Diet during the tumultuous time of the 1860s, and began to immediately clash with Bismarck upon his appointment to Minister President in 1862. During his membership of the Reichstag from 1880 to 1893, Virchow was a constant proverbial  thorn in Bismarck’s side and fought him on almost every topic due to ideological differences. This difference is exemplified in each man’s’ participation in the Revolution of 1848–Bismarck tried to put it down while Virchow fought on the side of the rebels and lost this prominent position at the Charite due to his involvement. This rivalry culminated in the infamous Sausage Duel between the two men in 1965 over a debate on the funding for the navy. Bismarck challenged Virchow the next day to a duel, but as the one challenged Virchow was allowed to choose the weapons, and he chose two seemingly-alike sausages. one of the sausages was filled with trichinae (a worm that causes zoonotic disease, which is deadly) and the other a normal sausage. Virchow then asked Bismarck to choose his weapon and eat it, then he will do the same. Though this proposition fit within dueling regulations of the time, Bismarck’s representatives refused it and thus no duel was fought.

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2603088/

http://www.charite.de/en/charite/organization/locations/campus_virchow_klinikum_cvk/

Rental Barracks

When Rudolf Virchow was born in 1821, industrialization had just begun to spread in Prussia. A year after a customs union–Zollverein— formed in 1834, the first German railway was opened, and Prussia’s strength began to grow. Steam engine production sped up and the population doubled in the next thirty years. With increasing population density and no true advances in sanitation, disease spread unchecked throughout Berlin and all of Europe. The large number of working class citizens were forced by the companies they worked for to move into overcrowded rental barracks to be nearer to the factories. Despite the passing of regulations by the president of police in Berlin to try to control the number of inhabitants in each dwelling, the homes remained cramped and thus the people remained unhappy and unhealthy.

Revolutions in France during the 1830s triggered similar riots throughout Germanic territories. Citizens were voicing complaints about dissatisfaction and unfairness of starving wages. These riots became a revolution when students joined the movements, bolstering the dissenters’ numbers and getting louder to draw attention to their cause. With the use of troops, Friedrich Wilhelm IV suppressed the revolutions for a short period of time. But, it was hard for people to ignore the Gilded Age that had swept through Berlin and all of Prussia. The increasing industrialization and urbanization created a sort of “Gilded Age” in Berlin where the working class toiled away in factories and lived in squalor while the city from the outside looked to be improving. From the time of Virchow’s birth to his graduation, just the span of 20 years, many more cultural additions to the city were opened, including Schauspielhaus Berlin and the Berlin Observatory. These new centerpieces contributed to Berlin becoming a cultural capital and attracted many more people to the city. With greater cultural and identity came enlightenment of more and more people when they looked at the stark contrast to these new artistic societies and the dirt the common person lived in—which also added to the revolutionaries hopes of reform.

Eventually as a result of these riots, parts of the Germanic territories introduced new constitutions in an attempt to placate the rioters. However, Prussia continued to combat any and all liberal movements with force and hardline censorship was used by the police to prevent any talk of socialism. This smaller and ongoing unrest set the stage for reform later.

Cross section of Berlin Streets

Despite the worsening political situation in the 1830s and early 1840s, certain aspects of daily life did improve. Many cities initiated trash collections, and sector by sector Berlin was shedding a layer or grim and the people were gaining healthier living conditions. Water pipe construction began, and soon most of the city had clean water within a few city blocks. The streets of Berlin were no longer known for their smell.

By the time that Virchow graduated with a medical degree from Friedrich-Wilhelms Institut in 1843, civil unrest was erupting throughout the German territories and Prussia into a full-blown revolution. After many years of poor harvests and famine as well as the the loss of jobs to new industrial techniques, the misery grew. Friedrich Wilhelm IV stalwartly ignored the suffering of his people and used military force to put down various revolutions of garment workers and tailors. The height of these riots culminated in 1848 in Berlin, after the Prussian government commissioned Virchow to write a report on a typhus epidemic in Upper Silesia (now Poland). Rudolf published his results, claiming that the government was responsible for the outbreak due to poor living conditions of the citizens. Even as a man employed by the government, Virchow joined the 1848 revolution at the barricades.

Caricature of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV

When the riots worsened the king attempted to make agreements with the revolutionaries. The Frankfurt parliament was formed with delegates from various German states, which were divided into two groups—those who favored a larger German state or those who favored Prussian authority. Finally, when the crown of Prussia was offered to King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, he refused to “pick up a crown from the gutter” and then like other contemporary European rulers he used armies to combat the remaining rebellions. Thousands of middle class liberals left the Germanic territories, most fleeing to the United States.

German unification did not occur until Wilhelm I of Prussia appointed Otto von Bismarck to convince the people of his militarism. Through his Blood and Iron speech Bismarck won over the rulers and the people by toeing the line between the two. He enacted more social programs and provided the increased economic opportunities the working class had been fighting for. Virchow and Bismarck, however, did not get along and Virchow fought Bismarck in the Reichstag on almost every move he made, because they were never liberal enough for him. Even during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 and afterward during unification, Virchow never supported Bismarck.

Rudolf Virchow was born in Prussia in October of 1821 to a working class family. He showed academic promise and excelled in school, eventually graduating from Friedrich-Wilhelms Institute (now known as Humbolt University of Berlin) with a degree in medicine. Rudolf’s chief goal was to help the German people stay healthy and he achieved this by studying pathology and debunking “humourism,” a harmful interpretation of what caused people to become sick. His first advancement, however, came from the facts he learned from his failure to contain the 1847-1848 typhus epidemic in Upper Silesia. This allowed his lay the foundation for public health initiatives in Germany and he disseminated his ideas through Die medicinische Reform a newspaper he founded about medical reform. In 1849 Rudolf became the first Chair of Pathological Anatomy at Berlin University. At this time he was also a part of Deutsche Fortschrittspartei, a political party Rudolf co founded, and through this group he was elected into the Prussian House of Representatives and won a seat in the Reichstag.

Next Rudolf moved on to oversee the Pathological Anatomy department at the University of Wurzburg in 1849. This, combined with his newpaper gained him acclaim in his field and he was invited back to Charite to direct it’s new Institute of Pathology. This campus is now named after him. Rudolf had strong opinions on politics and he had the prerogative to voice them, which caused some clashing within the Reichstag. His participation in the Revolution of 1848 led to his expulsion from Charite and Rudolf’s support of anti-catholic campaigns alienated some of his peers. He was a staunch enemy of evolutionary theories by Darwin, but at the same time conducted studies of school children’s hair and eye color and determined that the Aryan “race” concept was flawed.

Throughout his career, Rudolf published over two-thousand scientific works and his book Cellular Pathology (1858) is regarded as the foundation of modern pathology and is still referenced today. Rudolf was the first person in history to name and document various diseases such as leukemia, embolism, and thrombosis. He also was the first user of such terms as chromatin, agenesis, and spina bifida. Rudolf developed the first comprehensive guidelines for autopsy using surgery and microscopic examination of all body level cells.  One of his most important discoveries, one which affected Berlin directly, was his discovery of the transmission cycle of roundworm common in Europe which established the practice of meat inspection. When Rudolf died in 1902 he was called the “Pope of medicine” by his colleagues due to his founding of social medicine and advancement of public health.