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.
Interpretation
Disease is a natural occurrence in life, shaped by environmental factors rather than being a personal plight.
In this quote, Rudolf Virchow emphasizes that disease is a universal part of life influenced by external conditions rather than a unique, individual affliction. This perspective shifts the understanding of illness from being a personal misfortune to a natural part of the life cycle, governed by the same biological principles that apply to health.
In practice
In a health seminar, to emphasize the commonality of disease in human experience.
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.
Medical education does not exist to provide students with a way of making a living, but to ensure the health of the community.
The physicians are the natural attorneys of the poor, and the social problems should largely be solved by them.
If popular medicine gave the people wisdom as well as knowledge, it would be the best protection for scientific and well-trained physicians.
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?
Belief has no place as far as science reaches, and may be first permitted to take root where science stops.
The world little knows how many of the thoughts and theories which have passed through the mind of a scientific investigator, have been crushed in silence and secrecy by his own severe criticism and adverse examination!
Freedom is absolutely necessary for the progress in science and the liberal arts.
Mathematics deals exclusively with the relations of concepts to each other without consideration of their relation to experience.
The atom can't be seen, yet its existence can be proved. And it is simple to prove that it can't ever be seen. It has to be studied by indirect evidence - and the technical difficulty has been compared to asking a man who has never seen a piano to describe a piano from the sound it would make falling downstairs in the dark.
I don't expect that the million will ever be won, simply because there is no confirming evidence for any paranormal claims to date.
For the record: Quantum mechanics does not deny the existence of objective reality. Nor does it imply that mere thoughts can change external events. Effects still require causes, so if you want to change the universe, you need to act on it.
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