An increasing amount of Virchow’s work has been translated into English in the last decade, and the present work on pulmonary embolism is yet another welcome example. For those readers who cannot really appreciate the breadth of his vision or the depth of his learning so evident in his voluminous writings in German, they will now be able, increasingly, to sample the work of a truly gifted medical scholar . . . To read Virchow, and to follow his line of thought and the development of his arguments, is to be in the presence of a great physician. For Virchow the word doctor, meaning teacher, was the hallmark of his very productive life.
