This book is one of the towering classics in the history of the development of modern medicine. In a day when organic cells were believed to be formed chemically from 'blastemas, ' Rudolf Virchow lectured his colleagues at the Institute of Pathology in Berlin on his work proving that new cells were formed mainly by division of the old. His twenty lectures, published in this volume, trace how Virchow developed the importance of the cellular theory in pathology, exposed the falsity of previous theories of tissue component generation, and presented a new understanding of physiological and pathological tissues. His discussions turned the study of histopathology toward new horizons. -- from Back Cover.