93 Facts About Rudolf Virchow

Rudolf Ludwig Carl Virchow was a German physician, anthropologist, pathologist, prehistorian, biologist, writer, editor, and politician.

Rudolf Virchow is known as "the father of modern pathology" and as the founder of social medicine, and to his colleagues, the "Pope of medicine".

Rudolf Virchow then published a newspaper Die Medizinische Reform.

Rudolf Virchow took the first Chair of Pathological Anatomy at the University of Wurzburg in 1849.

Rudolf Virchow co-founded the political party Deutsche Fortschrittspartei, and was elected to the Prussian House of Representatives and won a seat in the Reichstag.

However, Rudolf Virchow supported Bismarck in his anti-Catholic campaigns, which he named Kulturkampf.

Rudolf Virchow was a co-founder of Physikalisch-Medizinische Gesellschaft in 1849 and Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Pathologie in 1897.

Rudolf Virchow founded journals such as Archiv fur Pathologische Anatomie und Physiologie und fur Klinische Medicin, and Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie.

Rudolf Virchow was the first to describe and name diseases such as leukemia, chordoma, ochronosis, embolism, and thrombosis.

Rudolf Virchow developed the first systematic method of autopsy, and introduced hair analysis in forensic investigation.

Rudolf Virchow was critical of what he described as "Nordic mysticism" regarding the Aryan race.

Rudolf Virchow described the original specimen of Neanderthal man as nothing but that of a deformed human.

Rudolf Virchow was born in Schievelbein, in eastern Pomerania, Prussia.

Rudolf Virchow was the only child of Carl Christian Siegfried Virchow and Johanna Maria nee Hesse.

Rudolf Virchow's father was a farmer and the city treasurer.

Rudolf Virchow progressed to the gymnasium in Koslin in 1835 with the goal of becoming a pastor.

Rudolf Virchow graduated in 1839 with a thesis titled A Life Full of Work and Toil is not a Burden but a Benediction.

Rudolf Virchow was most influenced by Johannes Peter Muller, his doctoral advisor.

Rudolf Virchow defended his doctoral thesis titled De rheumate praesertim corneae on 21 October 1843.

Rudolf Virchow published his first scientific paper in 1845, giving the earliest known pathological descriptions of leukemia.

Rudolf Virchow passed the medical licensure examination in 1846 and immediately succeeded Froriep as hospital prosector at the Charite.

Rudolf Virchow edited alone after Reinhardt's death in 1852 till his own.

Unlike his German peers, Rudolf Virchow had great faith in clinical observation, animal experimentation and pathological anatomy, particularly at the microscopic level, as the basic principles of investigation in medical sciences.

Rudolf Virchow went further and stated that the cell was the basic unit of the body that had to be studied to understand disease.

Rudolf Virchow 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.

Rudolf Virchow's first major work there was a six-volume Handbuch der speciellen Pathologie und Therapie published in 1854.

Rudolf Virchow held the latter post for the next 20 years.

Rudolf Virchow 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.

Rudolf Virchow did not initially accept the evidence for cell division and believed that it occurs only in certain types of cells.

Rudolf 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".

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 ; Rudolf Virchow extended this to state that the only source for a living cell was another living cell.

Rudolf Virchow correctly identified the condition as a blood disease, and named it leukamie in 1847.

Rudolf Virchow was the first to correctly link the origin of cancers from otherwise normal cells.

Rudolf Virchow thought, rather wrongly, that the irritation spread in the form of liquid so that cancer rapidly increases.

Rudolf Virchow's 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.

Rudolf Virchow made a crucial observation that certain cancers were inherently associated with white blood cells that produced irritation.

Rudolf Virchow was one of the leading physicians to Kaiser Frederick III, who suffered from cancer of the larynx.

The British surgeon Morell Mackenzie performed a biopsy of the Kaiser in 1887 and sent it to Rudolf Virchow, who identified it as "pachydermia verrucosa laryngis".

Rudolf 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 Rudolf Virchow being accused of misdiagnosis and malpractice.

Rudolf Virchow is known for elucidating the mechanism of pulmonary thromboembolism, coining the terms embolism and thrombosis.

Rudolf Virchow noted that blood clots in the pulmonary artery originate first from venous thrombi, stating in 1859:.

Rudolf Virchow then proceeded to prove this hypothesis by well-designed experiments, repeated numerous times to consolidate evidence, and with meticulously detailed methodology.

Rudolf Virchow founded the medical fields of cellular pathology and comparative pathology.

Rudolf Virchow was the first to establish a link between infectious diseases between humans and animals, for which he coined the term "zoonoses".

Rudolf Virchow was a great influence on Swedish pathologist Axel Key, who worked as his assistant during Key's doctoral studies in Berlin.

Rudolf Virchow worked out the life cycle of a roundworm Trichinella spiralis.

Rudolf 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.

Rudolf Virchow confirmed by microscopic observation that the white particles were indeed the larvae of roundworms, curled up in the muscle tissue.

Rudolf Virchow correctly asserted that these worms could cause human helminthiasis.

Rudolf Virchow established that human roundworm infection occurs via contaminated pork.

Rudolf Virchow was the first to develop a systematic method of autopsy, based on his knowledge of cellular pathology.

Rudolf Virchow found an unusual number of white blood cells, and gave a detailed description in 1847 and named the condition as leukamie.

Rudolf Virchow's 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.

Rudolf 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.

Rudolf Virchow found the unusual symptom in an autopsy of the corpse of a 67-year-old man on 8 May 1884.

Rudolf Virchow was the first to analyse hair in criminal investigation, and made the first forensic report on it in 1861.

Rudolf Virchow was called as an expert witness in a murder case, and he used hair samples collected from the victim.

Rudolf Virchow became the first to recognise the limitation of hair as evidence.

Rudolf Virchow 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.

Rudolf Virchow concluded that evidence based on hair analysis is inconclusive.

Rudolf Virchow developed an interest in anthropology in 1865, when he discovered pile dwellings in northern Germany.

Until his death, Rudolf Virchow was several times its president, often taking turns with his former student Adolf Bastian.

Rudolf Virchow excavated wall mounds in Wollstein in 1875 with Robert Koch, whose paper he edited on the subject.

Rudolf Virchow made field trips to Asia Minor, the Caucasus, Egypt, Nubia, and other places, sometimes in the company of Heinrich Schliemann.

Rudolf Virchow was an opponent of Darwin's theory of evolution, and particularly skeptical of the emergent thesis of human evolution.

Rudolf 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.

Rudolf Virchow himself examined the original fossil in 1872, and presented his observations before the Berliner Gesellschaft fur Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte.

Rudolf Virchow stated that the Neanderthal had not been a primitive form of human, but an abnormal human being, who, judging by the shape of his skull, had been injured and deformed, and considering the unusual shape of his bones, had been arthritic, rickety, and feeble.

Rudolf Virchow's campaign was because of Herman Muller, a school teacher who was banned because of his teaching a year earlier on the inanimate origin of life from carbon.

Rudolf Virchow believed that Haeckel's monist propagation of social Darwinism was in its nature politically dangerous and anti-democratic, and he criticized it because he saw it as related to the emergent nationalist movement in Germany, ideas about cultural superiority, and militarism.

Rudolf Virchow analysed the hair, skin, and eye colour of 6,758,827 schoolchildren to identify the Jews and Aryans.

Rudolf Virchow's 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".

Rudolf Virchow did not believe in the germ theory of diseases, as advocated by Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch.

Rudolf Virchow proposed that diseases came from abnormal activities inside the cells, not from outside pathogens.

Rudolf Virchow believed that epidemics were social in origin, and the way to combat epidemics was political, not medical.

Rudolf Virchow regarded germ theory as a hindrance to prevention and cure.

Rudolf Virchow considered social factors such as poverty major causes of disease.

Rudolf Virchow's ideology involved social inequality as the cause of diseases that requires political actions, stating:.

Rudolf Virchow actively worked for social change to fight poverty and diseases.

Rudolf Virchow called this new field of social medicine a "social science".

One of Westenhofer's students, Salvador Allende, through social and political activities based on Rudolf Virchow's doctrine, became the 29th President of Chile.

Rudolf Virchow made himself known as a pronounced pro-democracy progressive in the year of revolutions in Germany.

Rudolf Virchow worked to improve healthcare conditions for Berlin citizens, especially by working towards modern water and sewer systems.

Rudolf Virchow is credited as a founder of anthropology and of social medicine, frequently focusing on the fact that disease is never purely biological, but often socially derived or spread.

Rudolf Virchow was opposed to Bismarck's excessive military budget, which angered Bismarck sufficiently that he challenged Virchow to a duel in 1865.

Rudolf Virchow declined because he considered dueling an uncivilized way to solve a conflict.

Rudolf Virchow supported Bismarck in an attempt to reduce the political and social influence of the Catholic Church, between 1871 and 1887.

Rudolf Virchow remarked that the movement was acquiring "the character of a great struggle in the interest of humanity".

On 24 August 1850 in Berlin, Rudolf Virchow married Ferdinande Rosalie Mayer, a liberal's daughter.

Rudolf Virchow broke his thigh bone on 4 January 1902, jumping off a running streetcar while exiting the electric tramway.

Rudolf Virchow was buried in the Alter St-Matthaus-Kirchhof in Schoneberg, Berlin.

Rudolf Virchow's tomb was shared by his wife on 21 February 1913.