Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Share Flipboard Email. Alane Lim. Science Expert. Alane Lim holds a Ph. She has published numerous peer-reviewed journal articles on nanotechnology and materials science. Updated December 26, Born: October 13, in Schivelbein, Prussia. Died: September 5, in Berlin, Germany. Spouse: Rose Mayer. Featured Video. Cite this Article Format. Lim, Alane. Rudolf Virchow: Father of Modern Pathology.
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Your Privacy Rights. To change or withdraw your consent choices for ThoughtCo. At any time, you can update your settings through the "EU Privacy" link at the bottom of any page. These choices will be signaled globally to our partners and will not affect browsing data. Virchow was the only child of a farmer and city treasurer in Schivelbein, Germany. He had a strong interest in natural science. In , he received a scholarship from the Prussian Military Academy, where he was given the opportunity to study medicine in preparation for a career as an army physician.
With this approach Virchow launched the field of cellular pathology. He stated that all diseases involve changes in normal cells, that is, all pathology ultimately is cellular pathology. This insight led to major progress in the practice of medicine. It meant that disease entities could be defined much more sharply.
Diseases could be characterized not merely by a group of clinical symptoms but by typical anatomic changes. Pathologic anatomy, in addition to its great scientific merit, had tremendous practical consequences. If the physician was able to find out what anatomic changes had occurred in a patient, he could make a much more accurate diagnosis of the disease than he could in the past. This also empowered physicians to give more precise treatment and prognosis.
In many of his speeches Virchow stated that the practice of medicine in Germany should shift away from being a largely theoretical activity. He advocated for the study of microscopic pathological anatomy, for research to be performed by physicians, the importance of making systematic clinical observations, and the performance of animal experimentations. He was the first person to recognize leukemia.
He was also the first person to explain the mechanism of pulmonary thromboembolism. He documented that blood clots in the pulmonary artery can originate from venous thrombi. While Virchow, in Germany, was developing the new science of cellular pathology, Louis Pasteur, in France, was developing the new science of bacteriology.
Virchow fought the germ theory of Pasteur. He believed that a diseased tissue was caused by a breakdown of order within cells and not from an invasion of a foreign organism.
After Reinhardt's death in , Virchow alone edited the journal until his own death in In Virchow was among a group of physicians sent by the Prussian government to evaluate typhus outbreaks in Silesia, a poor rural area in what is now Poland. The poverty and destitution Virchow witnessed altered his priorities and helped form his political views. When Virchow returned from Silesia to Berlin in , he advocated for increased education and freedom, as well as government involvement in public health.
In July , he helped found a weekly newspaper called Medical Reform , which advocated for social medicine, the idea that people's health could be improved by better social and economic conditions. In , Virchow married Rose Mayer, the daughter of a colleague. Hans would later succeed his father as the professor of Anatomy at the University of Berlin in Virchow argued that life was merely the sum of the processes of cellular activities. He eventually published a six-volume series on pathology called the Handbuch der speziellen Pathologie und Therapie Handbook of special Pathology and Therapeutics in In , he further developed his ideas by publishing his famous aphorism omnis cellula e cellula which became a part of the foundation for cell theory.
The idea that new cells arose from pre-existing cells in both diseased and healthy tissue was not original. Robert Remak , a neuroscientist, had already come to this conclusion in , though his publication went largely unnoticed. Virchow also discovered that bones and connective tissue were composed of cells. Virchow also studied parasitic worms. He focused on Trichinella spiralis in swine, which he discovered caused the parasitic disease trichinosis when humans consume raw or undercooked pork.
This relationship, as well as the findings of parallel human and animal microbial pathogens by others, including Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch, led Virchow to the idea that there was a relationship between human and animal diseases which he termed zoonosis.
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