The final phase of Rudolf Virchow’s life bore testimony not only to his theories about the cooperative social organization of the body—cells working with cells—but also a belief in the cooperative social organization of the state: humans working with humans. Immersed within a society that was becoming progressively racist and anti-Semitic, he argued vehemently for equality among citizens. Illness was an equalizer; medicine was not designed to discriminate. “Admission to a hospital must be open to every ill person who stands in need of it,” he wrote, “whether he has money or not, whether he is
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