Rudolf Virchow Quotes about Science

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.

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.

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.

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

Brevity in writing is the best insurance for its perusal.

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.

'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.

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

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

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.

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?

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

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

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