THEODORE SCHWANN, FATHER OF THE CELL DOCTRINE
My message is chiefly to you, Students of Medicine, since with the ideals entertained now your future is indissolubly bound. The choice lies open, the paths are plain before you. Always seek your own interests, make of a high and sacred calling a sordid business, regard your fellow-creatures as so many tools of trade, and, if your heart's desire is for riches, they may be yours; but you will have bartered away the birthright of a noble heritage, traduced the physician's well-deserved title of the Friend of Man, and falsified the best traditions of an ancient and honorable Guild. On the other hand, I have tried to indicate some of the ideals which you may reasonably cherish. No matter though they are paradoxical in comparison with the ordinary conditions in which you work, they will have, if encouraged, an ennobling influence, even if it be for you only to say with Rabbi Ben Ezra, "What I aspired to be and was not, comforts me." And though this course does not necessarily bring position or renown, consistently followed it will at any rate give to your youth an exhilarating zeal and a cheerfulness which will enable you to surmount all obstacles--to your maturity a serene judgment of men and things, and that broad charity without which all else is naught--to your old age that greatest of blessings, peace of mind, a realization, maybe, of the prayer of Socrates for the beauty in the inward soul and for unity of the outer and the inner man; perhaps, of the promise of St. Bernard, "Pax sine crimine, pax sine turbine, pax sine rixa."
--Osler, Teacher and Student, Aequanimitas.
THEODORE SCHWANN, FATHER OF THE CELL DOCTRINE.
It is one of the curious features of history that genuine worth of human accomplishment is almost in inverse ratio to the popularity it obtains in the generation in which it is produced. Supremely great work is rarely appreciated at anything like its proper value, by contemporaries. This principle is true apparently in all fields of human endeavor. In literature and in art it is a commonplace. But also, surprising though it may be, in science and in social betterment the rule holds a prominent place. It is nearly always the sign of only passing merit when any work secures the plaudits of its own generation. Brilliant theories are often immediately hailed with universal acclaim, while ground-breaking observations that are really great discoveries are apt to be neglected. The really new discovery is so novel that men cannot appreciate it at once. It is so different from their ordinary modes of thinking that they cannot place it properly. Its complete significance fails them.
This has been true for our nineteenth century biology almost more strikingly than for any other department of knowledge. Our many avenues of publicity instead of heralding abroad the great observations as soon as they have been made, in order to enable others to continue the work that the master mind has begun, have been only too constantly crowded with new opinions, novel theories, taking hypotheses, all attracting attention that they did not deserve. Men like Theodore Schwann, the father of the cell doctrine, are not apt to be so well known as the suggestor of some [{254}] striking bit of theory. Even the great biologists, such as Darwin himself, are known rather for their insubstantial theories than for their substantial additions to biological knowledge by patient observation and genial penetration into the secrets of nature. It is perhaps a warning to the modern physician who realizes this state of affairs, not to take the popular theories even in his own branch of biology as the current coin of truth. Theories pass, but observations endure. Auenbrugger's new method of tapping the chest in order to elicit its varying sounds looked even more childish than Galvani's acceptance of the position of dancing master to a frog, but their observations thus made continued the germs of undying truth.
While the name and the life of Theodore Schwann are but little known by the general public, his work is very thoroughly appreciated by those who have made special studies in biology, and few men in the progress of that science are considered to hold as high a place as that assigned to him. A study of the life of Schwann will serve to show not only that he eminently deserves this honor which has come to him, but will also bring into evidence the fact that his career deserves to be better known popularly, because it illustrates very well the typical mode of life in which great scientists are nurtured and the methods of investigation by which great discoveries are made.
Of the men who have made the biology of the nineteenth century there are three whose names stand out with special prominence. They are noted not for their controversial writing on mooted points, but for ground-breaking, original work of the highest scientific import. Their discoveries will preserve their memories for posterity long after the names of many of those to whom the glare of controversial publicity lent an ephemeral brightness for their own [{255}] generation shall have been forgotten. They are: Theodore Schwann, the anatomist, to whom modern biology owes its foundation by the establishment of the cell theory; Claude Bernard, the physiologist, to whom we are indebted for the great biological ideas of nervous inhibition and internal glandular secretion; finally Louis Pasteur, the chemist-bacteriologist, to whom is due the refutation of the annihilatory abiologic doctrine of spontaneous generation, and the discoveries that have revolutionized modern medicine and promise to accomplish as great a revolution in modern manufactures and industries.
It has often been said that the Catholic Church is opposed to scientific advance. It has especially been insisted that in what concerns biological science the Church's attitude has been distinctly discouraging. Recently the definite assertion has been made that no original thinker in science could continue in his profession of faith. Now, it so happens that all three of these men were born in the bosom of the Catholic Church, and were educated from their earliest years to maturity under her watchful care. Schwann and Pasteur remained in the midst of their great scientific triumphs her faithful sons. For years Bernard withdrew from all his old religious associations and became indifferent to the spiritual side of life, but before the end he came back to the knees of the Mother whose fostering care meant so much to him in early life.