The aim of this historical-epistemological study is to research the theories and classifications of malignant tumours in various periods of human medicine, concentrated on systematic treatises of two great simultaneously working pathologists of 19th century, Carl Rokitansky in Vienna and Rudolph Virchow in Berlin. The study illustrates the transformation in overall conception of the essence, nature and cause of cancerous disease, starting with a review of works by Carl Rokitansky (1804–1878), who understood cancer in a different way than contemporary biology. Rokitansky understood tumorous tissue as sediments of an unknown morbid substance, which was said to be produced excessively by the sick body. In this concept we can see some remnants of ancient humoral pathology. By contrast, Rokitansky’s contemporary Rudolph Virchow (1821–1902) formulated and established the cell theory (“omnis cellula cellula”) and described cancer as a mass of pathologically excessively dividing. He also explained the origin of tumour metastases as “daughters” of the original primary tumour, which grow from solitary dropped off tumour cells, like an embryo growing from a single fertilized egg. Virchow has firmly established the principal method of thinking in theoretical and clinical oncology to this day.
The study seeks the roots of the cell theory and considers the success of this theory in the light of sociomorphic modelling. The idea of cells as “cooperating of an organism-state” originated in the century of civil emancipation and democracy.
Tumours; pathology; oncology; cancer; 19th century; cell theory; Rokitansky – Virchow
ISSN 0300-4414 (print)
ISSN 2788-3485 (online)
founded 1968
Published by Society for the History of Sciences and Technology http://www.sdvt.cz
Pavel Mervart Publishing http://www.pavelmervart.cz/
