"Medicine on a Grand Scale." Rudolf Virchow, Liberalism, and the Public Health

by Ian F. McNeely

"Medicine on a Grand Scale" explores the connections between classical liberalism and public health policy through the career of Rudolf Virchow. Virchow was the founder of modern pathology, the architect of Berlin's sewerage system, a pistol-wielding revolutionary, and a liberal politician whose concurrent service to three German parliaments totalled ninety-six years. His many-faceted activities offer a unique opportunity to situate the growth of social medicine within the matrix of liberal ideology. The book's three main chapters discuss Virchow's medical reform activities in the 1848 Revolution (starting with his famous report on the Upper Silesian typhus epidemic), his role in the canalization of Berlin, and his parliamentary activity in public health legislation and the politics of the German medical profession under the Second Empire. Its conclusion assesses Virchow's legacy to German, and broader European, social liberalism. A short study written in a robust, accessible prose, this monograph is intended not only for scholarly consumption but also for interested laypeople in the medical and public health communities.

142 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 1, 2002

Reviews

[archana · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting historical perspective; related to a lot of topics for the MPH

[Nafis Faizi · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well written thesis on Virchow’s ‘Medicine on a Grand Scale’ worldview.


An overview of Virchow’s commitment to reconciling a hard-nosed science with ethical humanism. His resistance to Darwinism and therefore disputes with Haeckel, as well as with Bismarck on politics has always been interesting. The book does not delve deep into that though. The author has brilliantly reflected the blend of compassion and distance from Virchow’s life, the “firm connection between his professionalized compassion in the medical realm, and his paternalistic ideology in the political realm. Medical practice combined social distance with fraternal humanism in the relation of doctor to patient, and to Virchow, this relationship paralleled that between liberal social scientists and the suffering masses.’’
Contrary to popular perception, his views contrasted with ‘scientific dictatorship’ and were not meant to regulate medical practice as much as one expects. Even his social cause versus individual cause (Koch) is not an either/or subject and he never disputed the germ theory of disease or undermined its importance but complemented it to his social worldview.
Through the sanitation project of Berlin and Virchow’s work in different associations, the writer has brilliantly theorized Virchow’s pragmatism and political view.