VIRCHOW, RUDOLF, pathologist and publicist, was born in 1821 at Cbslin, in Pomera nia. He was a pupil of the great physiologist, Johann Muller; graduated in medicine in 1843; and became, in 1847, prosector to the university of Berlin. The same year he was commissioned by the government to investigate the cause and cure of typhus in Silesia; and also, in conjunction with Reinhardt, founded the annals of pathological anatomy and of clinical medicine. The political commotions of 1848 dragged hint, in common with many other votaries of science, into the revolutionary. vortex. He established,a journal entitled the Medical Reformer, and also a democratic club, where he soon dis tinguished himself as an orator. He was, in consequence, elected a member of the national assembly, but was not admitted because he was, a parliamentary sense, a minor. With the conservative reaction, Virchow bad his journal suppressed, and lost his post, but was elected to the chair of pathological, anatomy in Wurzburg. His lectures at that university were widely popular for the novel views which he struck out particularly in cellular pathology. His reputation grow so great that he was recalled by Manteuffei in 1856 to Berlin, where lie re-occupied the chair of pathological anatomy, _ and rendered it the most famous of its kind in Europe. In 1859, when the liberal cause revived, he became a member of the municipal council of Berlin, where he distinguished himself as a reformer of the arbitrary police system then rampant; and soon after was chosen deputy by the electoral college of Saarbrfick, and by two of the Berlin colleges.
He soon rose to the leadership of the opposition, and proved a most effective antagonist of the encroachments made in the name of the royal prerogative. He took the lead, in Jan., 1863, in carrying the address in which the ministry were accused of having violated the constitution. Such was the energy of his opposition, that in June, 1865, he was challenged to a duel by count Bismarck. In 1878 lie retired from parliamentary life, in order to devote himself exclusively to science, after having been for years a prominent member of the advanced liberals in the Among his works are his inaugural thesis, Dc Rheumate Cornets (1843); The Colloid Tumours of the Ovaries, and on Cancer (1847); Cholera (1848-49); Flexions of the Uterus, Scrofula, Tuberculosis, Typhoid ,hoer (1850); Cellular Pathology (1850); Amyloid Degeneration (1853); Morbus Spedalska (a disease peculiar to the Norwegian coasts, 1859); Triehiniasis (1860); Tumours (1862); Cellular Pathology in its foundation an Physiologie,al and Pathological histology (1871); a notable article On the Standpoints of Scientific Medicine (1878). During the wars of 1866 and 1870-71, Virchow took an active interest in the sanitary arrangements for the troops in the field. He was elected honorary member of the royal medical society of London in 1856, and in 1859, corresponding member of the medical society of Paris.