Rudolf Virchow: Sämtliche Werke

of ‘public life. practical politics, public healthcare and forensic medicine’ from the years 1848 to 1879. They come from a period when Virchow was ‘young, and when the spirits were in active motion’. All of this remains current today, for many of the questions raised here, ‘have even now not yet been settled. some of them have in fact returned to the forefront of interest precisely in the most recent time. Most are indeed large and weighty questions which served as a subject for discussion. Through. circumstances I was called upon early to play a part in solving such questions. A whole series of the most serious epidemics passed before my eyes. ‘War, famine and pestilence became the objects of my consideration.’ The whole collection is, as Virchow himself says in his preface, written ‘in a more lively tone that is usual elsewhere in scientific literature’.