s virtually a long-drawn-out series of desks winding back and forth
throughout the entire room, but all united into one, so that a specimen
passed along the table from end to end will make a zigzag tour of the
room, passing finally before each person in the entire audience. To
facilitate such transit, there was a little iron railway all along the
centre of the table, with miniature turn-tables at the corners, along
which microscopes, with adjusted specimens for examination, might be
conveyed without danger of maladjustment or injury. This may seem a
small detail, but it is really an important auxiliary in the teaching
by demonstration with specimens for which this room was peculiarly
intended. The ordinary lectures of Professor Virchow were held in a
neighboring amphitheatre of conventional type.

Of a sudden there was a hush in the hum of voices, as a little, thin,
frail-seeming man entered and stepped briskly to the front of the
room and upon the low platform before the blackboard in the corner. A
moment's pause for the students to take their places, and the lecturer,
who of course was Virchow himself, began, in a clear, conversational
voice, to discourse on the topic of the day, which chanced to be the
formation of clots in blood-vessels. There was no particular attempt at
oratory; rather the lecturer proceeded as if talking man to man, with
no thought but to make his meaning perfectly clear. He began at once
putting specimens in circulation, as supplied on his demand by his
assistants from a rather grewsome-looking collection before him. Now
he paused to chaff the assistant who was making the labels, poking
good-humored jokes at his awkwardness, but with no trace of sting. Again
he became animated, his voice raised a little, his speech more vehement,
as he advanced his own views on some contested theory or refuted the
objections that some opponent had urged against him, always, however,
with a smile lurking about his eyes or openly showing on his lips.

Constantly the lecturer turned to the blackboard to illustrate with
colored, crayons such points of his discourse as the actual specimens in
circulation might leave obscure. Everything must be made plain to every
hearer or he would not be satisfied. One can but contrast such teaching
as this with the lectures of the average German professor, who seems not
to concern himself in the least as to whether anything is understood by
any one. But Virchow had the spirit of th