TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
Professor Virchow and 'his works are so well known wherever the science of medicine is studied, that I think it quite unnecessary to give any account of them here.
When I arrived in Berlin in March, 1858, these lectures were in the course of delivery, and I was present at a few of the concluding ones. Subsequently, whilst attending the lectures, classes, and postmortem examinations[1] which are held in the Pathological Institute by Professor Virchow, I had ample opportunities for seeing practical illustrations of most of the doctrines advocated in this book. It was natural, therefore, that I should feel a desire to translate these lectures, the more especially as I had every reason to suppose that the views put forward in them still remained unknown—in consequence, no doubt, of their German dress —to a large proportion of the English medical public, although they had already, many of them several years previously, appeared in Professor Virchow's larger works.
The translation will in many instances be found to differ somewhat from the original, for numerous additions, subtractions, and substitutions have been made, many of them at the suggestion of the Author, many at my own, but all with the Author's sanction.
A few notes will be found, especially in the later lectures. Of these some are literal, some free translations of, or are based upon, answers I received from Professor Virchow to questions I had put to him, whilst others (pp. 352, 406, 415-416) were made entirely at
- ↑ From 700 to 800 bodies are examined annually in the Institute.
