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You are here: Home / Science / How Did the Cell Theory Originate and How Did Physician Rudolf Virchow Help Pioneer the Science of Pathology?

How Did the Cell Theory Originate and How Did Physician Rudolf Virchow Help Pioneer the Science of Pathology?

March 31, 2020 by Karen Hill

By the 1850s, people still didn’t know exactly what caused disease.

There were many theories, but none were based on scientific principles.

In 1858, the German physician Rudolf Virchow offered the first clue with his cell theory.

He said the cell, which Dutch inventor Antoni van Leeuwenhoek had seen 200 years earlier, was the basic unit of human life and that disease occurs when the function of cells is disrupted.

From this, he developed the science of pathology, the study of diseased body tissue.

Virchow applied his cell theory to both diseased and healthy tissue and asserted that diseased cells are produced by healthy cells.

For example, the first malignant cell in cancer is born from a healthy cell. It’s called a mutation, and it produces more cancerous cells.

Virchow proposed that a study of cells would explain what causes disease in the body.

Twenty-five years later, another German physician would use Virchow’s ideas to discover the chemistry behind disease and create a “magic bullet” to fight the process.

The biggest breakthrough in antibiotics came in 1928 when British bacteriologist Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin.

Penicillin is a non-poisonous chemical produced by mold that kills many different bacteria.

Related Facts

  • Where do Germs, Bacteria, and Viruses come from and How do they make us sick?
  • Who Discovered Cell Structures and What was the first accurate map of the structures that make up a living cell?
  • Who Discovered Cell Division and How do chromosomes split so that cells can divide to produce new cells?
  • Who Discovered Penicillin and Where does Penicillin come from?
  • Where does penicillin come from and How did scientists discover penicillin?
  • Who Discovered Mitochondria and What does the word Mitochondria mean in Greek?

Filed Under: Science

About Karen Hill

Karen Hill is a freelance writer, editor, and columnist. Born in New York, her work has appeared in the Examiner, Yahoo News, Buzzfeed, among others.

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