Rudolf Virchow Quotes

Belief begins where science leaves off and ends where science begins.

Medical statistics will be our standard of measurement: we will weigh life for life and see where the dead lie thicker, among the workers or among the privileged.

There can be no scientific dispute with respect to faith, for science and faith exclude one another.

Laws should be made, not against quacks but against superstition.

Disease is not something personal and special, but only a manifestation of life under modified conditions, operating according to the same laws as apply to the living body at all times, from the first moment until death.

Belief has no place as far as science reaches, and may be first permitted to take root where science stops.

The physicians are the natural attorneys of the poor, and the social problems should largely be solved by them.

Body: A cell state in which every cell is a citizen.

Only those who regard healing as the ultimate goal of their efforts can, therefore, be designated as physicians.

My politics were those of prophylaxis, my opponents preferred those of palliation.

Brevity in writing is the best insurance for its perusal.

Life itself is but the expression of a sum of phenomena, each of which follows the ordinary physical and chemical laws.

The task of science, therefore, is not to attack the objects of faith, but to establish the limits beyond which knowledge cannot go and found a unified self-consciousness within these limits.

The body is a cell state in which every cell is a citizen. Disease is merely the conflict of the citizens of the state brought about by the action of external forces.

Between animal and human medicine, there is no dividing line-nor should there be.

It is the curse of humanity that it learns to tolerate even the most horrible situations by habituation, that it forgets the most shameful happenings in the daily shame of events, and that it can hardly understand when individuals aim to destroy this infamy.

Cellular pathology is not an end if one cannot see any alteration in the cell. Chemistry brings the clarification of living processes nearer than does anatomy. Each anatomical change must have been preceded by a chemical one.

If we would serve science, we must extend her limits, not only as far as our own knowledge is concerned, but in the estimation of others.

First, it must be a pleasure to study the human body the most miraculous masterpiece of nature and to learn about the smallest vessel and the smallest fiber. But second and most important, the medical profession gives the opportunity to alleviate the troubles of the body, to ease the pain, to console a person who is in distress, and to lighten the hour of death of many a sufferer.

Medical education does not exist to provide students with a way of making a living, but to ensure the health of the community.

As long as vitalism and spiritualism are open questions so long will the gateway of science be open to mysticism.

'Science in itself' is nothing, for it exists only in the human beings who are its bearers. 'Science for its own sake' usually means nothing more than science for the sake of the people who happen to be pursuing it.

Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing else but medicine on a large scale. Medicine, as a social science, as the science of human beings, has the obligation to point out problems and to attempt their theoretical solution: the politician, the practical anthropologist, must find the means for their actual solution. The physicians are the natural attorneys of the poor, and social problems fall to a large extent within their jurisdiction.

No doubt science cannot admit of compromises, and can only bring out the complete truth. Hence there must be controversy, and the strife may be, and sometimes must be, sharp. But must it even then be personal? Does it help science to attack the man as well as the statement? On the contrary, has not science the noble privilege of carrying on its controversies without personal quarrels?

The task of science is to stake out the limits of the knowable, and to center consciousness within them.

Marriages are not normally made to avoid having children.

Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing more than medicine on a grand scale.

Imprisoned quacks are always replaced by new ones.

If popular medicine gave the people wisdom as well as knowledge, it would be the best protection for scientific and well-trained physicians.

Belief cannot be reckoned with in terms of science, for science and faith are mutually exclusive.

It is the curse of humanity that it learns to tolerate even the most horrible situations by habituation.