The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human

by Siddhartha Mukherjee

All cells come from other cells (Omnis cellula e cellula). Normal physiology is the function of cellular physiology. Disease, the disruption of physiology, is the result of the disrupted physiology of the cell. These five principles would form the pillars of cell biology and cellular medicine. They would revolutionize our understanding of the human body as assemblages of these units. They would complete the atomist conception of the human body, with the cell as its fundamental, “atomic” unit. 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 Jewish or heathen.”

Epistemic moral hippocratic