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( Rudolf Virchow)
Rudolf Ludwig Karl Virchow (October 13, 1821, Schivelbein (Pomerania) - September 5, 1902, Berlin) was a German doctor, anthropologist, public health activist, pathologist, prehistorian, biologist and politician. He is referred to as the "Father of Pathology," and founded the field of Social Medicine. From a farming family of relatively modest means, Virchow studied medicine in Berlin at the military academy of Prussia on a scholarship. When he graduated in 1842 he went to serve as Robert Froriep's assistant at the Berlin Charité rather than the expected military service. He was employed as an intern at Charité Hospital in Berlin but was suspended on March 31, 1849 because of his liberal view of the German government. Due to political reasons, he moved to Würzburg to study and teach anatomy. In 1856, he returned to Berlin as a professor of anatomic pathology (a chair created just for him) at Berlin University and the Berlin Charité where he had previously worked as Froriep's assistant. One of his major contributions to German medical education was to encourage the use of microscopes by medical students and was known for constantly urging his students to 'think microscopically'. The campus where this Charité hospital is located is named after him, the Campus Virchow Klinikum. Virchow is credited with multiple significant discoveries.Although he and Theodor Schwann are not mentioned together. His most widely known is indeed his cell theory. He is cited as the first to recognize leukemia. However, he is perhaps best known for his theory Omnis cellula e cellula ("every cell originates from another existing cell like it.") which he published in 1858. (The epigram was actually coined by François-Vincent Raspail but popularized by Virchow). It is a rejection of the concept of spontaneous generation, which held that organisms could arise from non-living matter. It was believed, for example, that maggots could spontaneously appear in decaying meat; Francesco Redi carried out experiments which disproved this. Redi's work gave rise to the maxim Omne vivum ex ovo ("every living thing comes from a living thing"), Virchow (and his predecessors) extended this to state that the only source for a living cell was another living cell. Another significant credit relates to the discovery, made approximately simultaneously by Virchow and Charles Emile Troisier, that an enlarged left supra-clavicular node is one of the earliest signs of gastrointestinal malignancy, commonly of the stomach, or less commonly, lung cancer. This has become known as Virchow's node and simultaneously Troisier's sign.
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