obeying the chemical messages from surrounding cells, committing
themselves along a particular cell line, thereby forming an advanced
cellular neighborhood and eventually functioning tissues and organs. Gone
awry, the abnormal cell loses function, and worse, achieves a diabolical
characteristic that not only impedes normal cellular and organ function,
but hastens death.
Virchow and his successors fathomed the significance of the cellular
basis of life—forever destroying the ancient, mystical speculations about
vital spirits, humors, and life forces. The need to restore “an ill-understood
balance that had become jangled”^19 was repudiated with the understanding
of disease as a set of “disordered biochemical phenomena”^20 that would,
in the future, be addressed by therapeutic interventions aimed at the locus
of dysfunction.
Miasma, bad air, unbalanced humors, and astrology were swept away by
anyone willing to pay attention. Virchow’s magnum opus was his textbook
Cellular Pathology, published in 1858, which demanded a new approach in
the “advancement of medical science.” This became the playbook for the
next century’s medical research accomplishments. William H. Welch, the
“Dean of American Medicine” at the founding of Johns Hopkins
University, ranks Virchow’s book alongside the works of Vesalius, Harvey,
and Morgagni as “the greatest advance which scientific medicine had
made since its beginning.”^21
Perhaps Virchow did achieve “no less than a universal knowledge of
nature from the God-head down to the stone” that he hoped for as a young
man. Sherwin Nuland describes him as “Hippocrates with a microscope.”
Together with his Teutonic microscopy colleagues (who would use
advanced stains like H&E in the 1870s), Virchow established Germany as
the medical mecca in the mid- to late–19th century, and the surgeons in
Germany and Austria (Langenbeck and Billroth in primacy) shared the
limelight as the epicenter of learning.
It has been claimed earlier in this book that for the first 295 generations
of modern man’s existence, an afflicted individual was always better off
“going it alone” rather than seeking care from a healer or physician. It is
only in the last five generations that a wise patient could expect
improvement in their lot by seeking medical attention. Rudolf Virchow, as
much as any physician-scientist, deserves the credit for turning our
attention to the cell as the foundational building block of life, the currency