The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1902-09-08
Rudolph NirchoW was


Rudolph Nirchow was one
of it's greatest scientific men. He was
a German, and his nationality connotes
the largest expenditure possible of hu-
man effort in the pursuit and SYSTEM
iZation of knowledge VirchoW's name
has become synonymous in the popu-
lar mind with certain theories on here
dtary transmission. He was supposed
to oppose the evolutionary view that
acquired parental traits are transmits
sible TO the offspring. If this view Is
or can be maintained, the biological
evolution would be rudely shattered.
But Virchows deductions have been
eXasperatingly exploited by men who
have accepted his provisional negation
of hereditary transmission in the clini-
cal theory OF life for an absolute denial
Of the evolutionary process. Nirchow
was as firm believer in evolution as
Darwin himself. He denied that pro-
toplasm is modified or conditioned in
its biological development by its en-
vironment. He believed that heredity
has it's ramifications stretched so far
back in the genesis of animal and
vegetable life, and that its large char
acteristics are so permanent that
neither his own researches nor those
of others satisfied him that hereditary
traits were Immediately transmissible.
So far as Virchow's views bore upon
man in his social development, they
We're far indeed from being consola-
tory. If heredity is as static as he con-
tended, the hopes of the moral and
physical progression of the human race
are despairingly small.
Virchow has made very few disciples
to his theories on heredity. His fame
and his work rest upon another and a
broader basis. 1t is as pathologist
that Virchow's claim to the gratitude
of mankind will rest. 1t was he who
established the principle that the laws
working in disease are not different
from those in operation in health, but
that they are subject to different con-
ditons. This fact is infinitely more
important as practical discovery than
his views upon heredity. His specu-
lations and Investigations have not
changed the trend of scientific thought,
nor discouraged the acceptance by the
men of science of the fundamental
principles of evolution as they We're
formulated by Charles Darwin. He
has accomplished much by his con-
scientious and laborious investigation
of one of the most obscure and intri-
cate divisions of the phenomena of life.
Virchow, as well as Darwin, knew that
organisms varied. Darwin claimed that
these variations have gone on from
the beginning of life, and are now as
at all times leading to the formation
of species. They are consequently
hereditary or transmissible. Virchow
| could not find in his morphological in
vestigations that hereditary traits are
transmitted with the definiteness
claimed for them by the modern school
of biologists and embryologlsts, who, of
course, base their conclusions upon
the Darwinian hypothesis. Criminolo-
gsts, for instance, assert that atav-
dSSShcioiioh arc thc ltItui-
tary legacy which the sins of the
father visit upon the children. Vir-
chow would be the last to deny that
sins of the father are visited upon the
children in the Biblical sense. The
child Of convict or a drunkard suf-
fers from parents sins in very real
and tangible way. But Virchow did
not recognize the sins of the parents
as the biological fountain from which
the child's evil development was pre-
determined.
Virchow was man who had large
| and practical views of life. He was no
recluse. He took citizens part in all
that concerned the civic welfare of