The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-11-01
vIRcHow's TALK IN LONDON.

and Immunity.
 Professor Rudolph Virchow of Berlin was selected to deliver the Huxley lec- ture at the opening of the Charing Cross hospital in London this year. The lecture was given before a crowded audience of medical men, over which Lord Lister presided in St. Martins Town Hall Professor Virchow de,iv- cred his lecture, on Recent Advances in Science and Their Bearing on Med,- cine and Surgery" in English. It is here printed in the London aTimes:
 T must confine myself to merely Sketching the influence of biological discoveries upon medicine. In this way also Will the example of Huxley be most intelligible to us. Huxley him self, though trained in the practical school at Charing Cross hospital, won his special title to fame in the domain of biology. As matter of fact, at that time even the name of biology had not come into general use. It was only re- gently that the idea of life itself ob tained it's full significance Even in the late middle ages it had not sufti, irnt strength to struggle through the veil of dogmatism into the light. I am glad to be able to-day for the second time to credit the English nation with the ser Nict of having made the first attempts to define the nature and character of life. It was Francis Glisson who, fol- lowing expressly in the footsteps of Paracelsus, investigated the principium vitae. If he could not elucidate the na ture of life, he at least recognized it's main characteristic. This is what he was the first to describe as 'irritability,' the property on which the energy of liv- ing matter depends. How great was the step from Paracelsus to Glisson, and, we may continue from Glisson to Hunter According to Paracelsus, life was the work of a special splritus which set material substance in action, like a machine: for Glisson, matter it. self was the prncipium energsticum. Unfortunately, he did not confne this dictum to living substances only, but applied it to substance in general to all matter It was Hunter who first an- nounced the specific nature of living matter as contrasted with non-living, and he was led to place materia vitae diffusa at the head of his physiological and pathological views. According to the teaching of Hewson and Hunter, the blood supplied the plastic materials of physiology as well as the plastic ex~ udates of pathology. Such was the basis of the new biological method. if one can apply such an expression to a still incomplete doctrine, in 1S42, when Huxley was beginning his medical studies at Charing Cross hospital. It would lead too far afield were I to re- count in this place how it happened that I myself, like Huxley. was early weaned from the pernicious doctrines of Immoral pathology.
 When Huxley himself left Charing Cross hospital in 1S46, he had enjoyed a rich measure of instruction in anato- my and physiology. Thus trained, he took the post of naval surgeon, and by the time that he returned, four years later he had become perfect zoologist and keen-sighted ethnologist. How this was possible any one will readily understand who knows from his own experience how great the value of per- sonal observation is for the develop ment of independent and unprejudiced thought. For young man who, be- sides collecting a rich treasure of posi- tive knowledge, has practiced dissec- tion and the exercise of a critical judg ment long sea voyage and a peaceful sojourn among entirely new surround ings afford an invaluable opportunity for original work and deep reflection Freed from the Journalism of the schools, thrown upon the use of his own intellect. compelled to test each single object as regards properties and histo- ry, he soon forgets the dogmas of the prevailing system and becomes, first a sceptic and then an investigator. This chance, which did not fail to affect Huxley, and through which arose that Huxley whom we commemorate to-day, is no unknown occurrence to one who is acquainted with the history, not only of knowledge, but also of scholars. We need only point to John Hunter and Darwin as closely allied examples. The path on which these men have achieved their triumphs is that which biology in general has trodden with widening strides since the end of last century--it is the path of genetic investigation. We Germans point with pride to our countryman who opened up this road with full conviction of it's importance, and who directed toward it the eyes of the world-our -prince-Goethe. What he accomplished in particular from plants others of our fellow-coun- trVmen achieved rom anlmalS-Wo OH. Meckel and our whole embryological school As Harvey. Haller and Hunter had once done,s so these men began also with the study Of the "ovulum." but this very soon showed that the egg was itself organized, and that from it arose the whole series of organic develop ments When Huxley, after his return, came to publish his fundamental ob- servations he found the history of the progressive transformations of the con- tents of the egg already verified for it was by now known that the egg was a cell and that from it fresh cells, and from them organs arose. The second of his three famous papers-that on the relationship between man and the ami mals next beneath him-limned in ex- emplary fashion the parallelism in the earliest development of all animal be- ings But beyond this it stepped boldly across the border line which tradition and dogma had drawn between man and beast Huxley had no hesitation in filling the gaps which Darwin had left in his argument and in explaining that "in respect of substance and struc ture man and the lower animals ara one" Whatever opinion one may hold