Abstract
MUCH interest has been excited not only among men of science but among the general public by Prof. Virchow's visit to England. From the moment when it was announced that he had agreed to deliver the Croonian Lecture, it was universally felt that it would not do to lose so good an opportunity of doing honour to an illustrious investigator. Prof. Virchow is known, of course, chiefly as a pathologist. He is the founder of the science of pathology in the sense in which it is now everywhere understood and taught; and it would be difficult to form too high an estimate of the value of this part of his labours. But Prof. Virchow is one of those men of genius who never find in any one department of research a sufficient outlet for their energies. In archæology, anthropology, and ethnology he has been for many years one of the foremost workers of the age, and he has brilliantly represented science in the political life of Prussia and the German Empire and in the municipal life of Berlin. As a teacher in the Berlin University, of which he is now Rector Magnificus, he has done much to foster a genuinely scientific spirit among the pupils who have flocked to his class-room; and as a writer he has command of so pure and attractive a style that he has been able to exercise a wholesome and stimulating influence on the intellectual life even of classes to whom science does not usually make a very strong appeal. Altogether, Prof. Virchow's career is one of which Germany has good reason to be proud. In him she possesses one of those rare and potent thinkers who touch no subject without giving it fresh significance, and who have the secret of awakening in other minds something of their own enthusiasm, independence, and vigour.
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The Croonian Lecture. Nature 47, 487–492 (1893). https://doi.org/10.1038/047487a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/047487a0