Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing more than medicine on a large scale
— Rudolf Virchow
Medical education does not exist to provide student with a way of making a living, but to ensure the health of the community.
— Rudolf Virchow
Medicine must go back to nature and a physician should be the high priest of nature.
— Rudolf Virchow
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.
— Rudolf Virchow
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.
— Rudolf Virchow
The physicians are the natural attorneys of the poor, and the social problems should largely be solved by them.
— Rudolf Virchow
Between animal and human medicine, there is no dividing line-nor should there be.
— Rudolf Virchow
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.
— Rudolf Virchow
Only those who regard healing as the ultimate goal of their efforts can, therefore, be designated as physicians.
— Rudolf Virchow
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.
— Rudolf Virchow
If popular medicine gave the people wisdom as well as knowledge, it would be the best protection for scientific and well-trained physicians.
— Rudolf Virchow
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?
— Rudolf Virchow
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.
— Rudolf Virchow
Life itself is but the expression of a sum of phenomena, each of which follows the ordinary physical and chemical laws.
— Rudolf Virchow
Belief cannot be reckoned with in terms of science, for science and faith are mutually exclusive.
— Rudolf Virchow
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.
— Rudolf Virchow
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.
— Rudolf Virchow
The task of science is to stake out the limits of the knowable and to center consciousness within them.
— Rudolf Virchow
Image Credit: (http://ihm.nlm.nih.gov/images/B25667) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
