Virchow's contribution to biology briefly. Rudolf Virchow. His life, scientific and social activities. Works on anthropology
The empirical period of anatomy ended with the appearance of the fundamental work of the Italian scientist Giovanni Battista Morgagni (1682–1771). The essay “On the location and causes of diseases discovered through dissections” was a summary of the results of 700 autopsies performed over the entire existence of medicine. Having proved that each disease causes certain changes in the corresponding organ, the author identified this organ as the site of localization of the disease process.
Morgagni's theory sharply contradicted the vitalistic views that existed at that time and presented illness as a physical phenomenon. Having laid the foundation for the clinical-anatomical direction, the Italian scientist created a classification of diseases, which earned him honorary diplomas from the Academies of Sciences in Paris, London, Berlin and St. Petersburg. Thus, a new science appeared in medicine - pathology, which studied painful deviations of a general nature and individual diseases. In the middle of the 19th century, pathology (from the Greek pathos - “suffering, illness”) was divided into two movements:
Humoral, coming from ancient concepts of moisture;
Solidarity, based on the materialistic conclusions of Erasistratus and Asclepiades.
Karl Rokitansky
The pathologist Karl Rokitansky (1804–1878) was considered the patriarch of the humoral direction. Czech by birth, Austrian by place of residence, he was simultaneously a member of the Vienna and Prague Academies and became famous as the organizer of the first department of pathological anatomy in Europe. The main provisions of Rokitansky's theory are set out in the work "Manual of Pathological Anatomy", created on the basis of 20 thousand autopsies performed by predecessors. It contained an analysis of the results of microscopic studies, which was an innovation in theoretical work of that time. In accordance with the author’s ideas, a violation of the body’s juices entailed illness. However, the pathology of individual organs was correctly considered as a manifestation of a general disease. Awareness of the relationship between the disease and the body's reaction is the only positive side of Rokitansky's humoral concept.
The conservative views of the Czech theorist were refuted by new information obtained using optical technology and based on cellular doctrine. The exponent of innovative principles was the German pathologist Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902), who identified the pathological process with disorders of the vital functions of individual cells. The scientist’s medical career began with work as an assistant and then as a prosector at the Berlin Harite Hospital. In 1847, the medical practitioner received a teaching position at the capital’s university and founded the journal “Archive of Pathological Anatomy, Physiology and Clinical Medicine.” Nowadays, this publication is published under the name “Virchow Archive”. In 1891 alone, 126 publications were published containing more than 200 articles by Virchow himself. According to contemporaries, the magazine presented readers with “a living history of the main acquisitions of medical science.”
Rudolf Virchow
At the beginning of 1848, Virchow took part in studying the epidemic of famine typhus in the cities of Upper Silesia. A detailed report about the trip was published in the Archives and was of considerable scientific and social interest. While working among his impoverished compatriots, the physician came to the conviction that “doctors are the natural advocates of the poor and a significant part of social issues falls under their jurisdiction.” Since then, science and politics have existed in parallel in the life of a scientist, uniting for some time in the field of public medicine. Virchow's participation in the reform movement caused discontent on the part of the Prussian government, and soon the scientist was forced to leave the capital. Having accepted the department of pathological anatomy at the University of Würzburg, he managed to find a worthy place even in the provinces. In 1856, Virchow returned to Berlin as a professor of pathological anatomy, general pathology, therapy, in addition, having an offer to become director of the Pathological Institute.
Virchow became famous as a zealous supporter of purity, proving his abilities not only in theoretical, but also in practical activities. Social and hygienic events, which concerned mainly Berlin, contributed to the development of sanitation in the country and the emergence of Rudolf Virchow as a politician. Thanks to the tireless work of the doctor, the city authorities reluctantly, but still carried out plans for the sanitary and hygienic arrangement of Berlin. The press of the time noted that Germany “in sanitary terms reached such a high degree of perfection” only after several years of Virchow’s dedicated work.
The scientist was the first to establish the physiological essence of such disease processes as leukemia, thrombosis, embolism, English disease, tubercle, various types of neoplasms, and trichinosis. Virchow's cellular (cellular) theory explained disease processes by changes in the vital activity of cells. Such views forever freed medicine from speculative hypotheses, closely connecting it with natural science. The Archives published articles explaining the normal structure of organs and tissues. The author proved the presence of living, active cells in connective tissue and its varieties; established that pathologically altered organs and neoplasms consist of ordinary physiological tissues; pointed to "contractility of lymphatic and cartilaginous cells."
The great merit of the German physician is the creation of terminology and systematization of the main pathological conditions. According to followers, the shortcoming of the cellular theory was the lack of ideas about the role of the cell in the pathological process.
Virchow's anthropological research concerned not only local archaics. In addition to archaeological excavations in Germany, he conducted research in Egypt, Namibia and the Peloponnese Peninsula. In 1879, the pathologist participated in the famous excavations of Troy, joining the expedition of Heinrich Schliemann. The result of his archaeological activities were the works “The Ruins of Troy” (1880), “On Ancient Graves and Buildings on Stilts” (1886) and many anthropological works. Examinations of the royal mummies in the Bulak Museum, and in comparison with the surviving images of the kings, served as the basis for conclusions regarding the anatomical features of each human race. Virchow proved the possibility of neoplasms of the gray matter of the brain and explained the dependence of the shape of the skull on the fusion of the sutures. As a biologist, he did not share his colleagues’ enthusiasm for simplified views on life phenomena and even had the courage to defend the isolation of a small element of life as the beginning of everything. The famous thesis “a cell comes only from a cell” figuratively ended the centuries-old debate among biologists about the spontaneous generation of organisms.
With his appearance, he split medicine into two historical eras - before the discovery of cellular pathology and after. The revolution that Rudolf Virchow made in medicine was the recognition of the untenable basic theory about the causes of diseases, which had dominated medicine since the time of Hippocrates - humoral pathology. This trend has been maintained for centuries, and other leading physicians until the middle of the 19th century. The essence of the humoral theory is that the cause of pathologies is an imbalance of fluids (blood, lymph, various mucus). The name “humoral” comes from the Latin humor - liquid. This theory has changed over time, but its basic principle has remained the same. Virchow's contemporary Karl Rokitansky was a leading representative of the humoral theory. He believed that changes in the chemical composition of blood and other body fluids lead to disease. An imbalance in the chemical composition of body fluids leads to a breakdown in the nutrition of tissues and organs. It causes the deposition in various parts of the body of a certain formation that does not have a structure, from which pathogenic cellular forms grow over time. There was a sound grain in Rokitansky’s reasoning, which was confirmed over time, and some of his ideas remain relevant to this day. The disease, according to his theory, affects the entire body, and changes in tissues are a consequence of the disease.
It is necessary to mention another theory that existed at that time and opposed the humoral one - iatromechanical. Then it was the second main theory about the causes of diseases and was based on knowledge of mathematics and physics.
Virchow dealt a crushing blow to the fundamentals of medicine: he smashed all the arguments for the “theory of liquids”, forcing him to agree with the scientific conclusions of his fiercest opponent, K. Rokitansky. It should be noted that Virchow’s theory was recognized and supported by leading doctors around the world. Thus, the speculative nature of the humoral theory was rejected under the pressure of scientific facts, which led Virchow to the creation of the theory of cellular pathology.
Virchow’s path to this discovery, which revolutionized medicine, is interesting.
A scientist of fantastic productivity and rare efficiency, Rudolf Virchow was born in 1821 in the Prussian province of Pomerania (now divided into German and Polish halves) into an unremarkable merchant family. The young man received a standard gymnasium education and in due time entered the Berlin Medical-Surgical Institute, where he was lucky enough to study under the supervision of the famous neurophysiologist I. P. Müller. The future brilliant minds of medicine studied with him on the course - Hermann Helmholtz, Theodor Schwann, deeply immersed in cell theory, Dubois-Reymond, Karl Ludwig are scientists who have the honor of great discoveries in the field of nervous and cellular systems.
At the age of 22, Rudolf Virchow had already defended his doctoral dissertation, after which he was appointed a research assistant at the oldest Charité clinic in Berlin, where he simultaneously served as an assistant to a pathologist. It was here that his talent as an observer, the curiosity of a scientist and the clear mind of a logician developed. He practically never parted with his microscope, studying all available pathological processes, various stages of diseases, changes in tissues, carefully recording and systematizing observations. They say he almost went blind. It took him three years to discover the existence of a brain cell that no one suspected, which he called glia (from the ancient Greek glia - glue). Before Virchow, the activity of the central nervous system was explained through neurons, which were assigned all functions - from the regulation of the speech apparatus to the control of organs. Today medicine knows that the functioning of neurons and their accompanying functions, as well as the production of neuronal cells, belongs to glial cells. They make up 40% of the entire central nervous system and are responsible for the metabolic processes of neurons. Rudolf Virchow discovered the connecting function of glial cells for neurons. Therefore, the name of new cells comes from the ancient Greek - “glue”. A year later, Virchow was elected a member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences for his significant achievements in the field of medicine.
Despite his passion for pathological research, Virchow, versatile and inquisitive, socially active and searching, could not help but react to the events in Europe in 1848. As a progressive-minded person, Virchow actively supported the revolution and new people's liberation civil ideals. His position did not go unnoticed by the German government, and the scientist was sent into conditional exile, away from the center of action - to the University of Würzburg, where he took the position of professor in the department of pathology. The revolution was suppressed, political activity died down, and almost ten years later the professor received his much-awaited appointment at the University of Berlin to the department of pathology created especially for him. Soon Virchow founded the pathology museum and the pathological-anatomical museum, which he headed permanently until the end of his days.
A year before his triumphant return to the University of Berlin, at the age of 34, he published his ideas about cell theory in a separate journal article. And three years later, in 1858, Professor Virchow published two volumes of a book in which he combined his scientific observations and knowledge. The work was called “Cellular pathology as a doctrine based on physiological and pathological histology.” He also published the lecture portion of his works and, in fact, announced the creation of a new approach in medicine. The terms with which he operated are still used by doctors. For example, Virchow described the pathological processes characteristic of a disease that he called “thrombosis.” He also characterized leukemia (degeneration of blood cells into malignant ones) and gave a description of embolism (blockage of veins and blood vessels by foreign particles - gas bubbles, fat, thrombus). The book was of enormous importance for the entire medical community. For several decades it has been the main source of medical theory throughout the world. In Russia, its translation was published a year after its release in Germany.
The cellular, or cellular, theory, which turned the medical world upside down, consisted of a revolutionary view of the pathological process. Pathology was explained as an altered life of minimal microorganisms - cells. Each cell was recognized as having full viability under autonomous conditions. Thus, the body was a kind of vessel filled with an abundance of life-giving cells. The famous Virchow formula said: every cell is from a cell. This explained the ability of cells to reproduce and multiply, that is, to divide. Virchow called a disease a violation of the living conditions of cells. An imbalance in the state of the cell leads to the development of a pathological process.
The always conservative medical community greeted such a revolutionary view of established theories with great distrust. Sechenov considered Virchow's idea of an organism as a union of autonomously viable organisms to be a great misconception. He considered the scientist's cellular principle to be false. However, Botkin supported Virchow's cellular theory. Modern science pays tribute to the historical value of the cell theory, but does not recognize its one-dimensionality and unification. A broader approach using humoral and neural theories, as well as some provisions from cellular pathology, is considered correct.
Virchow made an invaluable contribution to science by changing the methods of studying the origin of pathologies. Any conclusions must be scientifically substantiated and reasoned, while empirical methods, often formed by religious-existential views, must be rejected for lack of evidence.
Many of Virchow’s works are devoted to the causes of common and little-studied diseases - tumors, tuberculosis, and various types of inflammation. Virchow discovered the principle of the spread of infectious diseases in the body. He argued that the main role in the development of an infectious disease belongs to the body's reaction to the pathogen.
Virchow's productivity as a scientist is reflected in his numerous works on anthropology. For example, it is he who belongs to the classification of the structure of skulls. He also found that the shape of the skull depends on the sutures applied. The scientist always had a keen interest in archeology and even participated in the excavations of Troy. The result of his expedition were articles in historical magazines, including those translated into Russian.
It is noteworthy that Rudolf Virchow was an honorary member of the Russian Pirogov Surgical Society. The professor visited Russia several times to give lectures and published articles in Russian scientific periodicals. Virchow had a huge influence on the development of medicine in Russia; many works of famous Russian scientists are based on his research.
Rudolf Ludwig Karl Virchow(German: Rudolf Ludwig Karl Virchow; October 13, 1821, Schiefelbein, Pomerania - September 5, 1902, Berlin) - German scientist and politician of the second half of the 19th century, doctor, pathologist, histologist, physiologist, one of the founders of cell theory in biology and medicine , founder of the theory of cellular pathology in medicine; was also known as an archaeologist, anthropologist and paleontologist.
Biography
He was born on October 13, 1821 in the town of Schiefelbein in the Prussian province of Pomerania (now the Polish city of Swidwin).
After completing a course at the Friedrich-Wilhelm Medical Institute in Berlin in 1843, Virchow first became an assistant and then became vice-rector at the Berlin Charité hospital.
In 1847 he received the right to teach and, together with Benno Reinhard († 1852), founded the journal Archiv fr pathol. Anatomie u. Physiology u. fr clinic. Medicin”, now known worldwide under the name of the Virchow Archive.
In 1891, the 126th volume of this publication was published, containing more than 200 articles by Virchow himself and representing a living half-century history of the most important acquisitions of medical science.
At the beginning of 1848, Virchow was sent to Upper Silesia to study the epidemic of famine typhus that prevailed there. His report on this trip, published in the Archives and of great scientific interest, is at the same time colored by political ideas in the spirit of 1848. This circumstance, as well as his general participation in the reform movements of that time, caused the Prussian government to dislike him and prompted him to accept the ordinary chair of pathological anatomy offered to him at the University of Würzburg, which quickly glorified his name.
In 1856 he returned to Berlin as professor of pathological anatomy, general pathology and therapy and director of the newly established pathological institute, where he remained until the end of his life. This institute soon became a center of attraction for young scientists from all educated countries. Russian medical scientists especially owe a lot to Virchow and his institute.
Since 1866, together with Professor August Hirsch, he published “Jahresbericht ber die Fortschritte und Leistungen in der Medizin”.
He was buried in Berlin, Schöneburg.
Advances in biology and medicine
Virchow is the founder of the so-called cellular (cellular) pathology, in which disease processes are reduced to changes in the vital activity of the smallest elementary parts of the animal body - its cells. The views of this scientific theory, in connection with the successes of chemistry and physiology, forever freed medicine from various kinds of speculative hypotheses and constructions and closely connected it with the vast field of natural science.
As a pathologist, and especially a histologist, Virchow independently for the first time established the histological and physiological essence of very many painful processes of leukemia, thrombosis, embolism, amyloid degeneration of organs, English disease, tuberculosis, most neoplasms, trichinosis, etc. Virchow explained the normal structure of many organs and individual tissues; showed the presence of living and active cells in connective tissue of various types; found that pathologically altered organs and neoplasms consist of ordinary types of tissue, established the contractility of lymphatic and cartilaginous cells; found out the structure of the mucous membranes and intermediate tissue of the nervous system; proved the possibility of neoformation of the gray matter of the brain, explained the dependence of the shape of the skull on the fusion of sutures, etc.
As an anthropologist, Virchow contributed a lot with his work to the establishment of the anatomical features of races; as a biologist in general, he resisted the fascination with the exclusively mechanical views on the phenomena of life, so widespread during his youth, and had the courage to defend the idea of the isolation of the element of life as a sui generis principle. This is where his famous thesis “omnis cellula e cellula” comes from (a cell comes only from a cell), which ended a long debate among biologists about the spontaneous generation of organisms. As a figure in the field of public hygiene, Virchow is known for his work on the study of epidemics accompanied by deprivation and hunger, as well as leprosy, and for his participation in public hygienic activities for the construction of hospitals, schools, etc.
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| Yuliy Germanovich Malis
| Rudolf Virchow. His life, scientific and social activities
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Biographical sketch of Yu. G. Malis
With a portrait of Virchow, engraved in Leipzig by Gedan
//-- Virchow’s childhood. – Gymnasium in Keslin. – Friedrich Wilhelm Medical-Surgical Institute. – New trends in German medicine. – Virchow University teachers. – Physiologist Johann Muller. – Clinician Schonlein. - Doctoral dissertation --//
Rudolf Virchow comes from a poor merchant family. His father was engaged in trade in Schiefelbein, a small town in the Prussian province of Pomerania, where one of the most outstanding representatives of modern medical science was born on October 13, 1821.
Virchow spent his childhood in his hometown, where he attended public school, and then, after additional home training, he entered the classical gymnasium in Keslin at the age of thirteen. Thanks to his outstanding abilities, which were already evident early on, Virchow, upon entering the gymnasium, had for his age a very thorough knowledge of ancient languages, especially Latin. His knowledge of Latin gained him the favor of the director of the Kesli gymnasium, Otto Müller, a great expert in Latin classics. On the contrary, a teacher of Greek, a certain Grieben, disliked Virchow, despite his equally good training in this subject. The second preacher of the town, who studied Greek with Virchow in Schiefelbein, was fundamentally against learning grammatical rules by heart, and tried to ensure that the boy learned these rules quietly, practically, as a result of which he forced his student to translate a lot into Greek. As a result of this method of teaching, the young classicist acquired entire figures of speech and applied them unerringly in class exercises, in the so-called extemporalia, so memorable to everyone who went through the gauntlet of the routine system of classical education. The gymnasium teacher in Keslin, on the contrary, required, first of all, knowledge of grammatical rules by heart. Virchow did not satisfy this requirement of Grieben, and yet his translations into Greek were always very well and correctly written. The venerable teacher therefore treated Virchow’s knowledge with distrust and at first suspected him of cheating. When Grieben, despite all the strictness of control, could not notice that Virchow was resorting to any illicit means, he began to harbor some hostile feelings towards the innocent young man. This hostility between the teacher and the student could have, as often happens, fatal significance for Virchow.
At the final exam, although Virchow passed well in Greek, the stubborn teacher still declared that he was voting against Virchow, who, in his opinion, did not have sufficient moral maturity required for admission to the university. The opposition of the venerable Hellenist, fortunately, had no influence. Virchow not only received a matriculation certificate, but his name was included first in the list of eight who graduated with him, in March 1839, from a course at the Keslin gymnasium. It doesn’t hurt to note that Virchow was 17 and a half years old at the time.
Among the teaching staff of the Kesli gymnasium, the talented history teacher Bucher had a particularly beneficial and developing influence on his students. Thanks to him, Virchow developed an early interest in history, which he studied with enthusiasm. Under the influence of such a hobby, in all likelihood, that vein of publicity had already opened in the young man, which later flowed so strongly in the “armchair” scientist, who took a prominent place in the ranks of members of the Berlin municipality and the Prussian parliament.
Already on the gymnasium bench, Virchow decided to devote himself to the study of medicine and, even before completing the gymnasium course, submitted an application in advance to be accepted as a student at the Friedrich-Wilhelm Medical-Surgical Institute.
Virchow spent the spring and summer after graduating from high school in his homeland. He took advantage, among other things, of this free time to study, without any outside help, the Italian language. In general, Virchow had a great inclination and remarkable ability to study languages. Being in the last class of the gymnasium, he carefully attended Hebrew language classes and upon graduation, although he already knew that he was devoting himself to medical sciences, he even passed an exam in the Hebrew language - an exam that was important only for future theologians.
In the fall of 1839, Virchow left his hometown and went to the capital, Berlin, to enter the medical-surgical institute.
The Friedrich-Wilhelm Medical-Surgical Institute in Berlin was founded at the very end of the 18th century with the aim of training efficient doctors for the Prussian army. This institute was structured on the model of higher military educational institutions; its students were government officials who lived in the institute itself. During the four-year course, they listened to lectures from professors at the Berlin Medical Faculty along with university students. The institute had an excellent anatomical museum, a museum of military field surgery, a museum of surgical instruments and apparatus, physics and chemistry rooms, a collection of pharmacological (medicinal) drugs, and also, most importantly, an extremely rich medical library containing about 50 thousand volumes. Military doctors attached to the institute work with students as tutors. Thanks to all this, the Medical-Surgical Institute provides full opportunity for disadvantaged young people to receive an excellent medical education. From this institute came a whole phalanx of luminaries of German medicine. We will name only Virchow's comrade, Helmholtz, the famous physiologist and physicist, Leiden, professor of internal medicine at the University of Berlin, and Nothnagel, who occupies the same department in Vienna.
At that time, the head of the medical-surgical institute was Wibel, “old man Wibel,” as everyone called him. He was, according to Virchow’s definition, “a man of moderate knowledge, but with great tact, whose heart was in the right place.” It was the responsibility of the assistant head of the institute, Grimm, to specifically monitor the educational part and supervise the students’ classes. The latter was distinguished by his breadth of vision and was able to notice the special abilities of each student individually and guide them accordingly.
Soon after Virchow was accepted into the ranks of the institute's students, Grimm drew attention to the outstanding abilities of the newcomer and the passion with which our young physician devoted himself to the study of his science.
At that time, German medicine was entering a new phase. The Chinese wall that separated German medicine from French and English medicine with their positive direction - a wall created by the Germans' admiration for various philosophical systems - finally collapsed. The last philosophical system to subordinate medicine to its influence was the teaching of Schelling - his natural philosophy. Outstanding representatives of natural science and medicine of the first quarter of the 19th century stood under the banner of natural philosophy. This hobby was facilitated to a large extent by the idealism of Schelling's teaching, who preached high views on the tasks of science and life. The German medical historian Geser even sees a well-known connection between the national revival of Germany and the widespread dissemination of natural philosophy. The brilliant period of this teaching coincided with the wars of liberation, and “the best and brightest personalities among the Germans belonged to the heralds of natural philosophy.” The natural philosophical school of medicine built its system on the foundations of Schelling’s philosophy; for her, a logical hypothesis was a completely legitimate equivalent to observation. Following this path, this notorious “philosophy of nature” reached such fantastic inventions where there was no longer a trace of either nature or philosophy. Such extremes naturally caused a reaction. German doctors realized that an alliance with such a philosophy was fruitless. They realized that medicine, this science about man, about a living organism, cannot be studied from dead books, that theories and fantasies created in the silence of the office must give way to reality and facts, that life-giving sources of medicine should be sought in the natural sciences. Observation, as natural science understands it, is the motto of the so-called natural history school, which replaced the former natural philosophical school. French medicine had adopted this direction much earlier, and the new medical school in Germany had to transfer the scientific acquisitions of its neighbors to its soil. Indeed, from this moment on, the precise method of clinical research, as it was practiced by the French and English, was pouring into German clinics in a wide wave. Of course, the “natural history” school could not immediately shake off the fog of natural philosophy, this uncontrollable passion for hasty generalizations and dubious systematization. The theoretical structure of medicine still rested to a large extent on hypotheses and analogies.
In the development of German healthcare, the new school served as a transition from the natural philosophical to the modern natural scientific view of medicine. In the era we are describing, the dawn of the natural science era in medicine was already underway in Germany. The natural scientific method in full, with its powerful levers - observation and experience - began to be used by German doctors. They had to go through all these stages in a relatively short time.
We find Virchow on the student bench, when victory was far from being on the side of the new trends. The struggle was waged along the entire line; the Sturm– und Drangperiode of German medicine was far from over.
Among the professors at the University of Berlin were precisely those two representatives of medical science who played a primary role in the revival of German medicine - the famous physiologist Johann Muller and the brilliant clinician Schönlein, head of the school of natural history. Thanks to this fortunate circumstance, Virchow was able to become acquainted with new scientific trends first-hand. He did not have to regret that, being attached as a student of the medical-surgical institute to Berlin, he was deprived of the opportunity to follow the laudable and useful custom of German students, who, not limiting themselves to staying at any one university, strive to visit several universities during their university course in order to listen to leading professors in various branches of the corresponding cycle of sciences.
In the life of every educated person, the impressions that he experienced at the university bench, the influence, or rather, the influences that outstanding professors have on their audience, do not pass without a trace. For future scientists, these influences often determine the direction and nature of further independent scientific activity. One can rightfully apply a well-known French proverb to a scientist, paraphrasing it somewhat, namely: “Tell me who your teachers are, and I will tell you who you are.”
Who were Rudolf Virchow's teachers?
Among the university teachers who had a special influence on the scientific development of the young Virchow were Johann Muller - “one of the greatest biologists of all times,” as he was later characterized, and then the clinician-therapist Schönlein - “a brilliant doctor who combined real direction with bold theories,” according to our definition the great surgeon-thinker Pirogov.
The son of a shoemaker in Koblenz, Johann Müller, under very unfavorable conditions, completed a university course at the medical faculties of Bonn and Berlin. While only a fourth-semester student, the gifted 19-year-old received a medical prize from the University of Bonn for his experimental work in embryology. In Berlin, under the influence of the professor of anatomy and physiology Rudolphi, Müller so radically renounced the natural philosophical inclinations he had acquired in Bonn that he later burned all the copies of his first works that he could get his hands on. The participation and support of an influential member of the Prussian Ministry of Education gave Müller the opportunity, after completing the course, to calmly engage in further scientific work. Soon Müller received a professorship at the University of Bonn, from where he moved to Berlin in an unusual way. When in 1833 the department of anatomy was vacant at the University of Berlin and there was talk of who to appoint, the Minister of Public Education completely unexpectedly received a statement from Bonn professor I. Müller. In his letter, Johann Müller demanded that the vacant chair be given to him as the most suitable candidate; He was ready to give in to only one person, namely the famous pathologist at that time, Johann Friedrich Meckel. This famous letter, transmitted to the minister by the same patron of Müller, a member of the ministry, breathed with the purest love of science and a deep sense of self-esteem; it made a very strong impression on the minister, and Müller took the chair in Berlin.
The brilliant mind of a scientist who had an extraordinary breadth of vision and extensive information on all biological sciences, an original and highly independent character and, finally, a very special, impressive appearance, reminiscent of the appearance of a Roman warrior - all this in Müller had an irresistible effect on his listeners. Our famous surgeon, N.I. Pirogov, who studied at the same time in Berlin, speaking about Müller, also dwells on his appearance. “The face of Johann Muller,” writes Pirogov, “struck you with its classic profile, high forehead and two eyebrow furrows, which gave his gaze a stern look and made the penetrating gaze of his expressive eyes somewhat stern. As if in the sun, it was awkward for a newcomer to look straight into Müller’s face.”
Johann Muller was not the head of a scientific school in the ordinary sense of the word. He did not base his views on the infallible dogmas obligatory for his students as followers of a famous school. “There is no,” Virchow said later (1858), “Müller’s school in the sense of dogmas, since he did not teach them - but only in the sense of method. The school of natural science that he formed does not know the generality of the known teaching, but only the generality of firmly established facts and, even more so, the generality of the method.” This method is an “exact” natural scientific method, which is based on observation and experience and which aims to firmly establish facts. “One man,” declares Helmholtz in his excellent speech “Thinking in Medicine” (“Das Denken in der Median”), “has especially given us the enthusiasm for working in a truly scientific direction, namely, the physiologist Johann Müller. All theories were for him only hypotheses, which are subject to testing by facts and about which the facts alone decide.”
From the famous physiological triumvirate of Müller's students - Helmholtz, Brücke and Dubois-Reymond - the latter paints for us in vivid and attractive colors how Johann Müller taught and how he influenced his students.
“Just as he himself,” writes Dubois-Reymond, “stood on his own feet everywhere, so he demanded from his students that they be able to help themselves. He set goals and gave impetus; for the rest, he was content, using a chemical comparison, with some kind of catalytic effect. No more was required. He acted as, in Goethe’s words, beauty acts—by its mere presence. In the eyes of his disciples, he was surrounded by some kind of demonic charm, like Napoleon I in the eyes of his soldiers, and “Soldats, l" Empere ur a l "oeil sur vous" was enough for us to arouse in us the highest tension of forces. If I try to analyze this charm, then it seems to me that it lies in the fact that everyone who was close to him experienced, consciously or unconsciously and each in his own way, the captivating influence of a powerful personality, which itself, sacrificing all sorts of other considerations, all sorts of life's pleasures, all sorts of comforts - pursued an ideal goal with a seriousness that bordered on gloominess and all-conquering passion. The highest reward for us was when Müller forgot himself for a moment, abandoned his stern seriousness and indulged in universal conversations and jokes. Müller refrained from influencing the course of the research he initiated, but he provided his students with the widest freedom in their development and inclinations. He respected all independence. This explains that among his students, it was precisely those who further pursued his most characteristic aspirations in physiology who could be in deep and openly expressed contradiction with him, and this never cast the slightest shadow on the mutual relations established between Müller and them. Thus, Müller, without trying at all, never presenting himself as a teacher either orally or in writing, never using the word “student”, in fact and truly founded not only one, but several schools of research on organic nature, according to his own versatility. Müller’s schools, while continuing to work in completely different directions, have nothing in common except that the fire they protect and support first appeared from his forge, that all these schools question nature in its meaning.”
Like all truly outstanding scientists who love their science, Johann Muller, in general extremely reserved, willingly met any manifestation of interest and love for science on the part of his listeners. With the foresight inherent in great minds, he recognized those most capable of scientific research. Virchow belonged to those select few par excellence whom Müller especially brought close to himself and with whom he was in direct personal communication. Virchow’s relationship with his “unforgettable teacher,” established as a student, later turned into a friendship that did not break until Muller’s death. “Few people, like me,” says Virchow, not without just pride, “have had the lot to see themselves next to our teacher at every important stage of their scientific development. His hand guided the first steps of a newcomer, through his lips as a dean I was awarded a doctorate, I met his warm gaze when, again during his deanship, I gave my first public lecture as a privatdozent. Of the large number of his students, I was the only one called, at his own suggestion, to take a place next to him in the close circle of the faculty, and he voluntarily provided me with an important area of \u200b\u200bhis ancestral possessions.
Another university teacher who had a strong influence on the student Virchow was the professor of internal medicine - Schönlein. If Johann Müller has the great merit of restoring in basic medical science, in physiology, the sovereign rights of strictly scientific observation and experiment - rights trampled upon by various philosophical schools, then Schönlein, in turn, took one of the most prominent places among German clinicians, introducing German clinical medicine, more precise methods of research, which are based on the natural sciences - physics and chemistry. The Schönlein Clinic was the first in Germany to use tapping and auscultation. At a time when in other German clinics cardiac and pulmonary suffering was still determined by the pulse and other so-called “rational” symptoms, Schönlein sought to find out the condition of the organs themselves through an accurate study. Using a microscope and chemical reagents, he examined painful secretions, blood and tissue. He related changes in organs found during autopsies to the clinical picture of the disease as it was observed during life. He skillfully used the data from the dissecting table at the patient’s bedside in order to make the most accurate diagnosis possible. “Pathological anatomy,” says Virchow about Schönlein, “became the basis of his diagnosis, and the latter became the basis of his fame.” And Schönlein's fame resounded throughout Germany and far beyond its borders. Schönlein's clinic, first in Würzburg, then in Zurich and finally in Berlin, was a veritable Mecca for students and doctors who flocked to his lectures from all directions. An important role here was also played by the fact that Schönlein presented his lectures in an extremely fascinating and lively manner. He understood the true meaning of the teacher’s “living word” and its enormous advantage over the “dead letter” of the book. This may partly explain why Schönlein wrote so little. His lectures were repeatedly published by his listeners - which, due to inevitable distortions, gave Schönlein more grief than pleasure - and were translated into foreign languages. Pirogov’s friend at the professorial institute in Derit, professor at Moscow University G.I. Sokolsky, who was Schonlein’s student in Zurich, published his lectures (in 1841) in Russian. Meanwhile, during the forty years of his professorial career, Schönlein himself published two articles, which together took up no more than three printed pages. And this is in Germany, whose scientists are amazingly prolific! Still, according to Pirogov’s fair remark, “few of the leading figures in medical science have earned themselves such a name as Schönlein, without leaving behind a single work, except lectures carelessly compiled by students.” To the regret of many “scientists”, the history of science in its assessment does not take into account the commercial value of published works.
Schönlein moved to Berlin from Zurich at Easter 1839, just when Virchow completed his gymnasium course.
“Since I,” says Virchow, “studied medicine in Berlin, I had the good fortune to listen to the new professor even in his brightest time, and I gratefully acknowledge that he had a tremendous influence on me.”
On Virchow, who was introduced to the basic medical sciences - anatomy, physiology and pathological anatomy, his future specialty - by Müller, and who was imbued to the marrow with the natural scientific direction of the latter, such a clinician as Schönlein, and only such a clinician could and should have had an enormous impact influence. In Schönlein, Virchow saw, as it were, a second Muller, but a Muller who had moved from the laboratory to the clinic to the patient’s bedside.
Virchow listened to theoretical lectures on private pathology and therapy (internal medicine) from Schönlein in the 1841/42 academic year. He himself took notes for the professor and kept these notes with all possible care. As early as 1865, Virchow kept these notes. Virchow was an intern at the Schönlein clinic during the winter semester of 1842/43.
In the last year of his student, in the summer of 1843, Virchow acted as a junior resident in the eye clinic of Professor Jungken. This circumstance gave him the reason to take the topic of his doctoral dissertation on a question in the field of eye diseases.
On October 21, 1843, Virchow publicly defended his dissertation “On inflammation of the cornea,” chaired by the dean of the medical faculty, Johann Muller.
Already in this first scientific work it was clearly revealed how much Virchow was imbued with the new natural science direction in medicine. In the introduction to his work, the young scientist expresses regret that the methods that medicine in modern times owes to the natural sciences have not yet been applied to the study of eye diseases. To appreciate the weight and fairness of this reproach, one should remember what a revolution in ophthalmology was subsequently made by Helmholtz’s invention (in 1851) of the eye mirror, a device that made it possible to directly observe the inside of the eyeball (the fundus). Thanks to the further application of the laws of physical optics to the study of the structure and functioning of our organ of vision, in other words, thanks to the development of physiological optics, ophthalmology has become one of the most complete and elegant pages of medical knowledge. Imbued with the ideas of his teachers, Müller and Schönlein, Virchow sadly notes that natural scientific methods of research do not find application in precisely the area of medicine where they are most appropriate.
The establishment of the idea of cell formation by division and the overthrow of Schwann's theory of cytoblastema is usually associated with the name of Virchow, an outstanding representative of German medicine of the last century.
We have seen that the recognition of this position was already largely prepared by the work of a number of researchers, in particular Kölliker, and especially Remak. Therefore, the statement that Virchow established the principle of cell division is incorrect. But Virchow contributed to the recognition of cell division as the only way of their reproduction; after his work, this position became a solid property of biology and medicine.
Virchow(Rudolf Virchow, 1821-1902), like a number of outstanding scientists we met in the last century, was a student of the school of Johannes Müller, but his interests early turned towards the study of pathology. From 1843 to 1849, Virchow worked at the famous Berlin Charite hospital and quickly gained fame for his work on the pathology of the circulatory system. In 1845, at the 50th anniversary of the Medical Institute, Virchow gave a speech “On the necessity and correctness of medicine based on a mechanical point of view.” Introducing the then progressive mechanistic concept into medicine, Virchow was a fighter for the elemental materialist understanding of nature, which was not sufficiently widespread in the 40s. When, after a trip to the typhoid epidemic of 1848, Virchow comes to the conclusion that the basis for the spread of typhus is the social conditions in which the malnourished working population lives, publicly comes out with demands to change these conditions and takes part in the revolution of 1848, he ends up in the number of “unreliable” ones. Virchow was forced to leave Berlin and become a professor of pathological anatomy in Würzburg, where he remained until 1856. Virchow’s work on cellular pathology dates back to the end of the Würzburg period. Virchow returns to Berlin already in a halo of glory, a special institute is created for him, where he widely develops scientific work and again appears on the public and political arena. In the 60s, Virchow still spoke out in opposition to the government, but later his “revolutionary” sentiments gave way to moderate liberalism, and after the Franco-Prussian War, Virchow’s speeches began to be clearly reactionary in nature. This evolution of Virchow's political views was reflected in his attitude towards Darwinism. Although initially welcoming the teachings of Darwin, Virchow in his later years became an ardent anti-Darwinist. An outstanding figure in Soviet health care, N. A. Semashko (1874-1949), in a biographical sketch dedicated to Virchow, wrote: “Virchow’s public (and scientific) star faded in old age. But this in no way detracts from the real merits that Virchow has before humanity” (1934, p. 166).
As a type of scientist, Virchow was the complete opposite of Schwann. An ardent polemicist, a tireless fighter for the ideas expressed, Virchow, through his propaganda of cell theory, contributed greatly to attracting attention to cellular teaching and consolidating it in biology and medicine.
In 1855, Virchow, in the “Archive of Pathological Anatomy and Physiology” he founded, published an article entitled “Cellular Pathology,” where he put forward two main points. Any painful change, Virchow believes, is associated with some pathological process in the cells that make up the body - this is Virchow’s first basic position. The second point concerns new cell formation. Virchow categorically speaks out against the theory of cytoblastema and proclaims his famous saying “omnis cellula e cellula” (every cell comes from another cell). In 1857, Virchow gave a course of lectures, which he used as the basis for his famous book, which revolutionized medicine. This book, entitled “Cellular Pathology Based on the Physiological and Pathological Study of Tissues,” was published in 1858, and the second edition was published the following year, 1859. How quickly Virchow's ideas captured the minds of scientists is evident from the spread of Virchow's teachings in Russia. In Moscow, even before the appearance of Virchow’s book, only on the basis of his articles, professor of pathological anatomy A. I. Polunin (1820-1888) began to present cellular pathology in his lectures, and in 1859 a translation into Russian of Virchow’s book was published, published Moscow medical newspaper.
What did Virchow’s work give for cellular science? First of all, cellular teaching, which had already penetrated into anatomy, physiology and embryology, under the influence of Virchow, spreads to a new area - pathology, penetrates medicine and becomes the main theoretical basis for understanding painful phenomena. Schwann, in his first report in January 1838, noted that the cell theory should also be applied to pathological processes. This was pointed out by Johannes Müller, Henle, and later Remak. Attempts to apply cellular theory to pathology were made by the English anatomist and pathologist Tudsir (John Goodsir, 1814-1867) back in 1845; he viewed cells as “centers of growth,” “centers of nutrition,” and “centers of power.” However, the then dominant humoral theory of Rokitansky (Carl von Rokitansky, 1804-1878), which explained diseases by spoilage of juices, seemed unshakable. Only Virchow managed to overthrow the teachings of the humoralists and with his book promoted and unshakably consolidated the doctrine of the cell in the field of pathology. Thus, the importance of the cell as an elementary unit of the structure of the organism was sharply emphasized. Since the time of Virchow, the cell has been placed in the center of attention of both the physiologist and the pathologist, the biologist and the doctor.
But Virchow’s book not only promotes the cell theory and expands the field of its application. She also notes some fundamentally new points in the concept of the cell. This concerns primarily the principle “omnis cellule e cellula”.
Although Remak, as we have seen, came to a similar conclusion before Virchow, Virchow deserves the credit for the final introduction of this principle into science. Virchow's winged formula has won universal recognition for the doctrine of the emergence of new cells through division. “Where a cell arises, a cell must have preceded it (omnis cellula e cellula), just as an animal comes only from an animal, a plant only from a plant” (1859, p. 25), Virchow declares. Thanks to Virchow, by the beginning of the 60s, cellular science was finally freed from the theory of cytoblastema and the idea of the free formation of cells from structureless matter. For both plant tissues and animal tissues, a single method of cell formation is established - cell division.
One more positive side of Virchow's book should be noted. His Cellular Pathology clearly marks the shift that has occurred in the understanding of the components that make up a cell. Virchow points out that “in most animal tissues there are no formed elements that could be considered as equivalents of plant cells in the old sense of the word, that, in particular, the cellulose membrane of plant cells does not correspond to animal cell walls and that the latter, as containing nitrogenous substances do not represent a typical difference from the former, as they do not contain nitrogenous substances” (1858, p. 7). According to Virchow, the usual membranes of animal cells correspond to the so-called primordial sac (parietal layer of protoplasm) of plant cells.
The term “nitrogen-containing substance” (stickstoffhaltige Substanz) was introduced by Nägeli and denoted the protein content of cells, in contrast to the “nitrogen-free substance” that makes up the cell membrane. The term “primordial sac” was introduced by Mohl.
Virchow considers, first of all, the nucleus to be essential for the life of cells. According to Schleiden and Schwann, the nucleus is the cytoblast, the maker of the cell. In the formed cell, the nucleus is reduced and disappears; Schleiden believed so, and this opinion, however, is less strongly supported by Schwann. On the contrary, for Virchow the nucleus is the center of cell activity. If the nucleus dies, the cell also dies. “All those cellular formations that lose their nucleus are already transient, they die, they disappear, die, dissolve” (1858, p. 10). This is a new, and, moreover, significant, moment in the idea of the cell, a significant step forward in the destruction of the old idea of the primary importance of the cell membrane. The “contents” of the cell for Virchow are not secondary deposits of the cell walls, as Schleiden and Schwann looked at the cytoplasm. “The special properties that cells achieve in special places, under the influence of special conditions, are generally associated with the changing quality of the cellular contents,” wrote Virchow (p. 11). This is a big shift in the way we think about the cell. It ended with the collapse of the old “shell” theory of cells and the creation of a new “protoplasmic” theory of the cell.
All these were positive points developed by Virchow. At the same time, his “Cellular Pathology” marked a sharp strengthening of the mechanistic interpretation of the cell theory, which subsequently led to that metaphysical interpretation of it, which was characteristic of the second half of the last and the beginning of the current century.
The germ of a mechanistic interpretation of cell theory was already present in Schwann when he wrote that the basis of all life manifestations of the organism lies in the activity of cells. But for Schwann, this mechanistic moment did not yet have the self-sufficient significance that it acquired later, and receded into the background before the greater positive significance of Schwann’s teaching. All this takes on a different color in Virchow’s works.
The starting point of Virchow’s concept is the idea of complete autonomy of the cell, as a kind of structural unit of the organism closed in itself. Virchow “personifies” the cell, endowing it with the properties of an independent being, a kind of personality. In one of his programmatic articles, Virchow wrote: “... each new success of knowledge brought us new and even more compelling evidence that the vital properties and powers of individual cells can be directly compared with the vital properties and powers of lower plants and animals. A natural consequence of this understanding is the need for a certain personification of the cell. If the lower plants themselves, the lower animals, represent the genus of personality (Person), then this feature cannot be denied in relation to the individual living cells of a complex organism” (1885, pp. 2-3). And so that the reader does not have any doubts, Virchow pathetically declares: “A cell that feeds, which, as they now say, digests, which moves, which excretes - yes, this is precisely a personality, and, moreover, an active, active personality, and its activity is not simply a product of external influence, but a product of internal phenomena associated with the continuation of life” (p. 3).
Naturally, with such a personification of the cell, the integrity of the organism, its unity, completely disappears. Virchow, without hesitation, declares: “the first need for a correct interpretation is that one must discard the fabulous unity, one must have in mind the individual parts, the cells, as the reason for existence” (1898, p. 11). Thus, the organism was completely decomposed into cells and turned into a collection of “cellular territories.” “Every animal,” says Virchow, “represents the sum of vital units, each of which has the full quality of life” (1859, p. 12). Moreover: according to Virchow, “each component part of a living organism has a special life, its own vitam propriam” (1898, p. 10). “A fully developed organism is built from one and different parts; their harmonious activity gives the impression of the unity of the whole organism, which in fact does not exist,” teaches Virchow (1898, pp. 20-21), trying to destroy any attempt to consider the organism as a whole. Virchow considers the vital activity of an organism only as the sum of the lives of its constituent cells: “since the life of an organ is nothing more than the sum of the lives of individual cells that are connected in it, then the life of the whole organism is a collective, and not an independent function” (1898, p. 11 ).
Since, according to Virchow, “life is the activity of a cell, its peculiarity is the peculiarity of a cell” (1858, p. 82), then everything that does not have a cellular design, from Virchow’s point of view, does not deserve attention. Virchow decisively excludes the intercellular substance, which in a number of tissues makes up the bulk, from the consideration of the biologist and pathologist. “The cell,” he declares, “is truly the last morphological element of all living bodies and we have no right to look for life activity outside of it” (1859, p. 3). Therefore, according to Virchow, “inter- or extracellular substance should be considered as a by-product, and not as a factor of life. Such parts which arise originally from cells, but whose cells have died, must be excluded from the field of biological consideration” (1898, p. 13). Likewise, under the influence of Virchow, the qualitative specificity of syncytial and symplastic structures, i.e., tissues where the separation of cellular territories is not expressed, remained outside the field of view of researchers.
The mechanistic interpretation of cellular theory given by Virchow had not only a negative theoretical significance. The program of the pathologist’s activity and the program of the clinician’s approach to the patient also flowed from Virchow’s concept. Refusing to see the whole in the body, destroying the unity of the organism, Virchow sees only a local phenomenon in any pathological process. “Cellular pathology,” he declares, “requires above all that treatment be directed against the affected areas themselves, whether the treatment is therapeutic or surgical” (1898, p. 38). This localistic principle in pathology, approved by the authority of Virchow, delayed the study of systemic diseases, diverting the attention of pathologists and clinicians only towards the study of local phenomena. Virchow ignores the importance of such systems as the nervous and humoral in the correlation of body parts. One cannot but agree with Winter (K. Winter, 1956) that from Virchow’s doctrine of cells as equal beings that determine the life of the whole organism, it logically follows that cells are endowed with a kind of “consciousness” (although Virchow himself does not make this conclusion).
Virchow's authority was exceptionally great in his time. But F. Engels has long noted the negative aspects of Virchow’s teaching. In the preface to the 2nd edition of Anti-Dühring, Engels wrote: “...Many years ago, Virchow was forced, as a result of the discovery of the cell, to decompose the unity of the animal individual into a federation of cellular states, which had a progressive rather than a natural-scientific and dialectical character.” In one of the fragments of “Dialectics of Nature,” Engels, speaking about the theoretical helplessness of natural scientists who do not understand the meaning of dialectics, gives the example of Virchow’s “Cellular Pathology,” where general phrases must ultimately cover up the author’s helplessness.” Taking into account the reactionary significance of Virchow’s concept leading to the “theory of the cellular state,” Engels, in his outline of the general plan of “Dialectics of Nature,” outlines “The Cellular State - Virchow” as a special chapter; Unfortunately, this chapter, like some other parts of Engels’ remarkable book, remained unwritten.
Among our domestic scientists, Virchow's teaching early met with decisive opposition. The founder of Russian physiology, Ivan Mikhailovich Sechenov (1829-1905), in the theses attached to his doctoral dissertation, published just two years after the appearance of Virchow’s book, wrote: “6) an animal cell, being an anatomically unit, does not have this meaning in physiological; here it is equal to the environment - the intercellular substance. 7) On this basis, cellular pathology, which is based on the physiological independence of the cell, or at least its hegemony over the environment, as a principle, is false. This teaching is nothing more than an extreme stage in the development of the anatomical direction in pathology” (1860). In these words, I.M. Sechenov gives an extremely apt description of the depravity of Virchow’s ideas, which overestimate the autonomy and importance of cellular structures in the body. A number of other pathologists and clinicians criticized Virchow's cellular pathology in Russia.
In recent years, the assessment of Virchow's significance in our literature has been very contradictory. From the apologetics of Virchow, which was characteristic of his assessment in the first decades of our century, in the 50s many authors went to the other extreme and began to deny any positive significance of Virchow’s works. So, for example, S. S. Weil (1950) wrote: “Unfortunately, even now one still hears statements that Virchow was once progressive, that his theory was once progressive and only now, today, it harmful. This is not true. She was harmful from the very beginning” (p. 3). Such a nihilistic assessment, crossing out “all of Virchow,” distorts the historical perspective and the current state of the problem. In reality, Virchow's work had both positive and negative sides; there is no reason to cross out some and artificially exaggerate others. Recently, the question of the significance of Virchow’s cellular pathology was reconsidered by I. V. Davydovsky (1956), who came to the conclusion that “to the credit of both cell theory and cellular pathology, we have quite a few achievements representing both general biological and specifically medical interest” (p. 9), although a number of Virchow’s provisions undoubtedly need to be re-evaluated and decisively criticized.
Summarizing the above, we will try to formulate the positive and negative aspects of Virchow’s work related to the development of cell theory. The positive aspects include, first of all, the fact that Virchow’s “Cellular Pathology” affirmed the importance of cell theory not only in the field of physiological phenomena, but also in pathology, thereby extending the application of cell theory to all life phenomena. Virchow, with his works, completes the collapse of the Schleiden-Schwann theory of cytogenesis and shows that division is a method of cell formation common to animals and plants. Finally, Virchow shifts the center of gravity in the concept of a cell from the shell to its “contents” and puts forward the meaning of the nucleus as a permanent and most important structure in the cell. All this cannot but be considered an asset of Virchow’s teaching. At the same time, a number of aspects of this teaching played a negative role in the further development of cell theory. This is the “personification” of the cell, endowing the cells with the meaning of autonomous beings that build the body of a multicellular organism. Virchow denied the integrity and unity of a multicellular organism, reducing its vital activity to the sum of the independent lives of individual cells. Virchow denied the vital properties of intercellular substances, considering them passive, dead, and excluding these substances from the field of biological consideration. Virchow did not take into account that although cells are the main structural element of tissues, they are not the only form of tissue structure. Finally, Virchow gave a false interpretation of the problem of the relationship between parts and the whole, shifting all attention to the parts of the organism and thereby cutting off the path to understanding the integrity of the organism. These fundamental mistakes of Virchow led to the line of development of cellular teaching, which was expressed in cellular physiology and the “theory of the cellular state.”
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