rl Virchow (commonly written
by him simply Rudolf Virchow). Although he took no direct part in any
of the striking advances in practice that appeal to the laity, yet he
was recognized the world over, among all classes of educated and
well-informed persons, as the one beacon light of Nineteenth-Century
medicine whose glow had been the steadiest and the most enduring. This
is because of the wide range of his learning in matters not pertaining
closely to his profession. His professional brethren hold the same view,
and this is because he so well controlled himself--checked himself at
every turn by the severest application of system--that he continued for
more than half a century an anchor to hold medical thought strictly down
to fact. This was from no natural lack of volatility, for he was an
_Acht-und-vierziger_ (Forty-eighter). 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. In
conjunction with Reinhardt, he founded the _Archiv fuer pathologische
Anatomie und Physiologie und fuer klinische Medicin_[6] (a periodical
familiarly called "Virchow's _Archiv_"), the publication of which was
begun in the year 1847. 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.

[Footnote 6: Archives of Pathological Anatomy and Physiology and of
Clinical Medicine.]

In consequence of his having openly proclaimed himself a Democrat in
1848, Virchow was forced to retire from the University of Berlin in the
following year. He was at once made a professor in the University of
Wuerzburg, whence seven years later, in 1856, as the result of the
strenuous interposition of various medical organizations, he was
recalled to Berlin, where he was made a professor and director of the
Pathological Institute. He was appointed medical privy councillor in
1874, having several years before that entered upon an active political
career and been one of the founders of the Progressive party, which he
ably represented in the Landtag and the Reichstag. In 1869 he took part
in founding the German and the Berlin Anthropological Societies, of each
of which he was several times president.

Virchow investigated the most diverse subjects, as his profound studies
of Schliemann's discoveries, as well as his other archaeological
researches, show, and