Virchow's Letters to his Parents

Abstract

IN an excellent and yet modest introduction to her fathers letters, Frau Rabi expresses the opinion that they have “almost the value of an autobiography”; in this she underestimates their worth, for even at the best an autobiography is but a picture drawn long after the early struggles are over, whereas we have here a picture painted as the events happened, and painted with a rare skill and uncommon intimacy, because it was not drawn for the public gaze, but for his fathers eye. Even had Virchow become, as was originally intended, merely a surgeon in the army, and had he remained, as at one time he feared, simply a unit in the great average mass, these letters would still have a permanent value as an interesting record of student life in Berlin during the fourth decade of last century; but since they depict the struggles of youthful years which culminated in a triple triumph at the dawn of manhood, they form indeed one of the most important contributions ever made to the study of great men. Before his thirtieth year Virchow had overthrown a speculative pathology which regarded disease as a manifestation of humours of the blood, and by the application of the methods used in the more exact sciences and the use of the microscope replaced it by one which rested on a solid foundation of fact. He had by then begun the study of the antiquities and people of his native province of Pomerania; by then he had thrown in his lot, at the risk of place and life, with the patriots who sought to curtail the autocracy of the crown and ameliorate the condition of the poor and oppressed. He was a splendid fighter, and he fought for truth and freedom in politics as well as in science.

Rudolf Virchow, Briefe an Seine Eltern, 1839 bis 1864.

Edited by Marie Rabl, geb. Virchow. Pp. xi + 244. (Leipzig: W. Engelmann, 1906.) Price 5 marks.