Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 60.djvu/195

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The eightieth birthday of one of the leaders of modern civilization has been celebrated with imposing ceremonies at Berlin. Virchow is the founder of the science of pathology, and his services for anthropology have been nearly as great. He has not only demonstrated that the scientific research of the laboratory may be directly beneficial to mankind, but he has himself applied his own discoveries for the welfare of Berlin and of the German army, whence they have extended to the whole world. There is no city whose inhabitants are not healthier and happier because Virchow has lived and worked; it is indeed scarcely an exaggeration to say that there is no patient of any village physician who does not benefit from the labors of this man whose name he may never have heard. Virchow often stood opposed to Bismarck; in written history the iron chancellor may always be the more frequently named, but the world's progress has probably been more directly led by the man of science.

The ceremonies at Berlin included the presentation of a marble bust of Virchow to the great Pathological Institute founded by him; the presentation of an additional endowment to the Virchow Fund for the promotion of research, toward which the municipality contributed $20,000; the presentation of addresses of congratulation on behalf of the empire, state and municipality, and from national and foreign institutions, and, most interesting of all, a lecture by Virchow on the history and scope of pathology. Lord Lister, who represented the Royal Society and other British institutions, said: "All these bodies join in recognition of your gigantic intellectual powers, in gratitude for the great benefits that you have conferred upon humanity, and in admiration of your personal character, your absolute uprightness, the courage which has enabled you always to advocate what you believed to be the cause of truth, liberty and justice, and the genial nature which has won for you the love of all who know you. The astonishing vigor which you displayed in the address to which we listened today justifies the hope that, when many of us your juniors shall have been removed from this scene of labor, it may be granted to you to celebrate your ninetieth birthday not only in health and honor but in continued activity in the service of mankind."

are among the most stable of institutions. Glasgow University recently celebrated its ninth jubilee, while Harvard University commemorated in 1886 the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of its foundation. Yale University, the third in age of our American colleges, is now two hundred years old and the event has been celebrated in a manner commensurate with the prestige of the institution. Such occasions are almost medieval in their gowned processions, the presentation of Latin addresses, the conferring of degrees and the like; but they are nearly as modern as football games, in so far as they serve as an occasion of collecting endowments, attracting students and arousing the loyalty of alumni. Both in its dramatic exhibition and in its financial outcome the celebration at New Haven was eminently successful. There were