rk and the rarest
insight, worked out that glorious reform of scientific medicine which
will shine through all time as a star of the first magnitude in the
history of medical science. In Wuerzburg, Virchow elaborated that
comprehensive application of the cellular theory to pathology which
culminates in the conception that the cell is an independent living
elementary organism, and that our human organism, like that of all the
higher animals, is merely a congeries of cells--a highly fertile
conception, which Virchow now denies as resolutely as he then
supported it. In Wuerzburg, twenty-five years since, I sat devoutly at
his feet, and received from him with enthusiasm that clear and simple
doctrine of the mechanics of all vital activity--a truly monistic
doctrine, which Virchow now undoubtedly opposes where formerly he
defended it. In Wuerzburg, finally, he wrote those incomparable
critical and historical leading articles which are the ornament of the
first ten yearly series of his "Archives" of pathological anatomy. All
that Virchow effected as the great pioneer of reform in medicine, and
by which he won imperishable honour in the scientific treatment of
disease,--all this was either carried out or preconceived in Wuerzburg;
and even the celebrated "Cellular Pathology," a course of lectures
which he delivered during the first year and a half after quitting
Wuerzburg for Berlin, consists only of the collected and matured fruits
of which the blossoms are due to Wuerzburg.

In the autumn of 1856 Virchow left Wuerzburg to settle in Berlin. The
exchange of a narrow sphere of labours for a wider one, of small means
and appliances for greater ones, proved unfavourable in this case, as
in many similar cases. Since he has been in Berlin, in a "great
Institution," and with luxurious appliances, all the scientific
results which Virchow has as yet brought to light are not to be
compared, either as to quality or quantity, to the grand and immortal
achievements which he himself effected in the little institute of
Wuerzburg with the scantiest means--a new proof of the maxim enunciated
by me, and hitherto never confuted, that "the scientific results of an
institute are in inverse proportion to its size." (See "The Aim and
Methods of Modern Evolution."[14])

Still more grave is the circumstance that, since settling in Berlin,
Virchow has more and more exchanged his theoretical scientific
activity for practical political life. It is wel